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PT Barnum famously said that there’s a sucker born every minute, but this is 2018 and that maxim needs to be updated to nanoseconds. What does that have to do with music? Well, the band Train rolls on, and now the world is stuck wallowing in Trump-Kanye love, too (turns out if you give a millionaire a tax break, he’ll sell out the few scruples he once had and become your Propaganda Minister).
If you’ve recently been exposed to the band Train, or some stupefying tweets, your only hope may be some slow burning black metal from the likes of Poland’s Behemoth. Behemoth has a live DVD and audio, Messe Noire: Live Satanist that came out April 13. More info and a free download of “The Satanist” (Mother’s Day is just around the corner!) here. Surprisingly atmospheric and nuanced, Behemoth offers a creeping version of darkness that erupts into all the evil cliches about the genre, but that remains enjoyable as music, and not just some growling thrash spasm meant to piss off your parents or for merely worshipping Satan. This is listenable; good even. The drumming is mind-bogglingly fast while retaining feeling, and the guitars sharpen slowly on those furious rhythms. We usually laugh our heads off at cookie monster vocals, but here’s a way to do it that’s scarier than funny. Bring on the apocalypse, we have something to play while we watch the sky burn.
Perhaps you’ve got it worse. Let’s say you happen to be a fan of the California (Not Los Angeles!) Angels baseball team, and you’re subjected to the band Train’s caterwauling shit song “Calling All Angels” on a regular basis. Your taste in baseball teams leaves you constantly mocked, and we can’t help you there, but you may need further ear cleansing by way of the upcoming covers album by Burn the Priest. Slayer’s annual opening act, Lamb of God, used to be called Burn the Priest, and for the band’s 20th anniversary, they’re bringing back the original name and releasing an album of covers of punk and hardcore songs called Legion XX. Here’s a video of them covering The Accused.
Here are some words we mustered (and some we didn’t) about some recent releases:
Earthless – Black Heaven
This ride is faster than last time we rode it, but the seat still has a nice groove. The pedal work still wahs well at these speeds.
There’s a Pearl Jam riff in there, just, um, grungier.
If “Volt Rush” doesn’t make you want to bomb a hill, you probably don’t know what bomb a hill means. You’re too old to be riding a skateboard, anyway. Those riffs at the beginning of the title track will keep your neck limber, your hair unkempt, and your spirit back at a coffee table full of overflowing ashtrays and dirty water pipes.
The Breeders – All Nerve
After the first time we heard this record, we told a friend we wanted there to be more. Something was missing. But we remembered that’s a feeling we learned to overcome long ago with many a Breeders song. That way of thinking is a symptom of our personal hangup of wishing the Pixies could have gone on forever in their original form, but Kim Deal’s other band (which should not have been called that for probably twenty five years, if ever) has always wowed with songs hold more weight than they seem capable of supporting. We knew that. Shame on us, but it has been ten years.
All Nerve is really pretty, really tender, and a really great example of the perfected oddness of a classic alternative rock record from those last days of music videos on MTV. Consider the sadness of the title track which tells a missed lover “I may hide and jump out at you” as it rides a bass line up to somewhere happier than its beginning. Riffs pop up, sweet little guitar leads whistle by, but you’re never in happy land, you’re in the “cornfields of East 35…with thighs sticking on the seat.” “Spacewoman” can’t help but remind you of a quiet sci-fi Bowie, but rather than glam off into the void, The Breeders drop a slow mo beat and riff that, combined with the beachball at the stadium in the lyrics, must be what it feels like to be at a ballgame on Valium. It’s pretty and comfortable. “Dawn: Making an Effort” – sounding like Lou Reed shaken with dull glitter – should be required listening before anyone nods off at six or seven AM.
Hot Snakes – Jericho Sirens
On the first Hot Snakes album in 14 years, John Reis and Rick Froberg unleash a thirty-minute squeeze by a boa constrictor of guitars that releases the pressure only slightly and with hypnotic patterns of super groovin’ intensity. “I Need a Doctor” opens and drills down, pierces in and gets you jumpin. “Candid Camera” features Mario Rubalcaba’s finest drum attack in mortal combat with sharp riffs, which ends up in a song that just beats all hell out of anything else that could’ve been occupying your thoughts. You’re in the Hot Snakes’ zone of fuck-it-let’s-rock-harder and damn the ride has some speed wobbles. “Why Don’t It Sink In” is spiked with the mania of a Rudimentary Peni song, so tight that the next track “Six Wave Hold Down” feels like being shot outta the tube like the surfer on the album cover. There’s still joy in rocknroll, folks, and it’s always been dark, but maybe not this fast. Through all the chops and screams and pounded drums, there’s always some San Diego sun somewhere in these burners: in the higher notes of “Having Another?” or “Death Doula,” and scattered throughout making you realize that this sweaty snake isn’t going to kill you, but simply squeeze the bullshit out of you in that mystical way that only the best fucking rocknroll can do. Ride on.
Superchunk – What A TIme To Be Alive
A few months late to the party, I can’t review Superchunk’s fantastic collection of indie pop played at the speed of punk any better than Steve Kendall did for Pitchfork, so here’s a link to that review, and another link to a live version of “Lost My Brain,” one of our favorite snapshots of these MAGA-nif-i-shit times, in an album of timeless anger.
The Damned – Evil Spirits 
What happens when goth goes to a 1970s funhouse (an actual place, not The Stooges record)? Weird sonic mirrors bounce styles all over the place, on this playfully ominous anachronism of an album. The Damned, though honored as the very first of the British punk bands to get that iconic label, have always been more than a bit theatrical and campy and goth, and now under the guidance of celebrity producer Tony Visconti, all those strains have been shined up and put on display like a collection of creepy dolls. Organs breathe all over everything, vocal oohs and aahs get doubled, and the rhythm section (always The Damned’s best weapon) saves most of it with bounce and snap. Singer Dave Vanian’s crooning has never gone so dark-old-casino lounging as it does on the rhinestone leather jacket wearing “Look Left.” “Sonar Deceit” has a “Lust For Life” beat with some shag carpet horns as it asks questions like “Why do the fish deserve the sea?” and “What do the dolphins hear that drives them all insane?” Perhaps it’s the campy gloss on the fist-pumping, corny “Procrastination” or the Elton John lite closer “I Don’t Care.” They won’t really drive you, or dolphins, insane, but they will make you put on an old Damned record instead of playing this again.
Alice Bag – Blueprint
We sailed through life without ever hearing Alice Bag’s Los Angeles punk originals The Bags but once or twice on a compilation, so we were happy to see her turn up recently at Alex’s Bar, where we got to hear her play some old songs and hip us to her new album. All over the musical map with lite ska, rock, a song en Español, and even a torch song worthy of a seventies James Bond opening, Blueprint is anchored by the potent screams of the song “77” which lambasts the unequal pay between men and women. Over smokin’ classic riffs, Bag is joined by Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill) and Allison Wolfe (Bratmobile), and the trio tear it up something fierce. Nothing else has anywhere close to the wild charge of that song, but the passion is always earnest, and the grooves good. Here’s the vid for “77.”
Etc…
Los Angeles glammy thrashers The Bronx have a video with a cool multi-camera, multi-room concept for their song “Side Effects” You may want to watch it a few times … June 6th has become International Slayer Day, because numerically it will always be ⅔ of the Number of the Beast. Naturally, the day started in ‘06 and has been observed ever since. In honor of the day being almost evil, Slayer is releasing a collection of 6.66 inch records. The limited edition sets will be available in black, red and gold-colored discs, and only 2500 of each color will be manufactured worldwide. Each set will feature six single vinyl EPs, each one measuring a unique 6.66-inches in diameter, and each will contain two songs from the Repentless album. The red and black disc versions will retail for $66.66, while the gold disc set will be priced at $73.99. The box sets can be pre-ordered at http://nuclearblast.com/slayer … There’s a new book about Devo coming out, and the press release promises, “Gerald V Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh have raided their archives for photos, artworks and memories for this uniquely DEVO book—a 2-in-1 upside-down thing of perverse beauty.” Crack that whip and pre-order here. … English soft punks Wire are reissuing their first three records this May, and a whole bunch of singles as well. For more information click here … MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer is releasing a book in August. Titled The Hard Stuff: Dope, Crime, the MC5, and My Life of Impossibilities. The book promises to cover Kramer’s abusive childhood, and the charged beginnings of his most excellent rocknroll band. He’ll be kicking those jams out again on an upcoming tour dubbed MC50, which will include a superfuckingamazing lineup of Brother Wayne on guitar along with guitarist Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), drummer Brendan Canty (Fugazi), bassist Dug Pinnick (King’s X), and Marcus Durant (Zen Guerrilla). As Kendrick Lamar once said, damn! Info about tix and dates here … If you’re a literature geek and a music fan like we are, then perhaps Bob Geldof’s new documentary about the Irish poet William Butler Yeats, “A Fanatic Heart” will be up your alley. A thorough account of the man Geldof calls “the oddest, bravest, weirdest, revolutionary who never killed a soul. The leader of the revolution of the Irish mind.” Yeats’s poems are read by the likes of Bono, Van Morrison, Noel Gallagher, Sting, and, of course, they roll out ol’ Shane MacGowen to mumble a few lines about drinking…Slainte! 
We leave you with this, because if you’ve read this far you deserve some Iggy!
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