Take out a moment to revisit mid-2000's Paul Wall

GET MONEY. STAY TRUE.

Sourvein

this shit fucking rocks and makes me want to slap on my soiled carharts, ancient weathered dystopia shirt, spark a fatty and stumble into a basement show spilling PBR everywhere!

Electric Wizard - Live

I wouldn't say Electric Wizard are one of my favorite acts in metal, but it's one of those things that if you are truly metal and have been known to enjoy large proportions of marijuana, you simply cannot deny their appeal. This is their best live clip i've seen on the tubes.

oh liz buckingham, how you melt my heart with your hundreds of watts of amplification and staggering blonde beauty.

Hank Williams and Anita Carter

Hank Williams Sr. is notoriously underdocumented when it comes to filmed performances. We are SO lucky that we have this intolerably charming gem of a moment shared between him and young Anita Carter on the Kate Smith Evening Hour,  April 23, 1952. Her beauty timelessly holds up today, and her eyes and dimpled smile tell so much more than just the song itself. what a jam.

Hank williams Sr. is a huge inspiration for me.

1998 Black Heart Procession show clips

Full disclosure: The Black Heart Procession is probably the single most influencial, favorite, most beautiful band I have known in my life. I have to be careful to not bore all my friends by talking about and promoting them too much.



well, new videos surfaced from a generous youtube user of a full set of theirs from early 1998! Since I have followed their entire career, I can say BHP have taken many shapes and forms. When I saw them last year, it was simply Pall and Tobias, playing stripped down, even more somber versions of some of their sombrest songs. when i saw them in 2003, they had a medium sized band accompanying half the songs. But I'm going to say, these videos are my favorite!



the band has always been just Pall and Tobias centrally, and the more big band elements often just detract from what they do best, which is deliver painfully honest sad songs for the sake of making something beautiful, and not wallowing. so early in their career in these videos, i feel like we get a much clearer glimpse into their influences and early ideas about direction-- the candle lit set, the matching spaghetti western outfits complete with sunglasses and cowboy hats, the faithful reproduction of their studio sound... Pall directly going for and hitting the high notes as recorded rather than uttering them an octave lower a decade of sadness and discontent on...



these are beautiful fucking moments and i remained puzzled at how these videos can remain with under a hundred views at the time of writing this. best BHP videos on youtube.

bomba estereo

so like, i'm not really too much into clubbish latin music like bomba estereo's myspace page songs, however this video is wonderful, and it's likely if the group's main sound was this stripped down acoustic vibe i'd eat it all up. you have to love latin rhythms, cute colombian girls, and semi impromptu street music performances.

Rhiguera - Vamos A La Playa

Leave it to my friend Daniel to pull out something like this on me, that would be just like him. One day in early summer i dropped by his place and we are talking about music, exchanging a couple songs, then he hits me with this like neon 80s boxing glove.

The brilliance. it's early 80s enough to still have these dying days of disco elements... and i'm not sure if you'd actually call it new wave or just legitimately clueless italian hackjob impersonations of what they were starting to see in america? But with that easy to swallow bassline, completely period-expected synth tones and repeating "vamos a la motherfucking playa" 6,000 times, all you find yourself wanting to do is continue singing this in unison, with everyone you know, in conga line fasion, while furiously scrambling for a trip to the beach.

this is what actually happened in our lives after that day, i repeated this song on loop for a few days until on one of the first hot summer days we actually vamos'd to that motherfucking playa. estamos en la playa.

Worship.

Any Worship fans in the house? Fuck me, this is some bleak, hopeless stuff. In fact, the former singer killed himself. These vocals are simply inhuman. the vocals are some of my favorite parts here i think.
this first review seems to sum up their sound very well

Sailors With Wax Wings

When you play the Sailors with Wax Wings album, it is better than you expect. even if you were already expecting it to be good because it involves members from bands you might like such as Pyramids, Swans, Slowdive, Nadja, and more, its still better than you were expecting. I won't write a review, because i agree with everything this one says. great album. this is my favorite song on it.

And rap song of 2010 goes to...

i award best rap song of 2010 to Michael Watts' cut of Khalifa's Still Blazin.
go harder than a motherfucker

BATILLUS

I think i might have had these guys come up on last.fm radio or something when i told it some bands I liked. They nailed the mood that i'm often after in more extreme metal -- utter pissed off helpless desperation. i'll hand em that. it was enough for me to check out their album.

its good, but I don't think it could make it into any of my regular rotations. sadly, thats almost totally due to the production rather than just the music.

I have nothing to back this up, but i get the intuition that some of these doomsters are inspired by old school dark industrial music... it could be the frontman's post industrial look or some of their interludes on the album, but the point is, i think it is from that influence that they made the mistake of overproducing the vocals. He's pissed, i buy it! we don't need the constant phaser, chorus, distortion, and carlsbad-cavern-sized ever-present reverb to reinforce that! My ear was totally exhausted after listening to the album once because of the production on the vocals, and its a shame because there are a few gems of riffage and discontent in there. i think this was one of the best tracks on the album.

also, why was your album art so poorly thrown together? if you would have got some proper artwork and cleaned up the vocal processing we could really have something here

Give this Kid some props for his BTBAM drum cover

At some point during youtube music browsing, i saw the thumbnail for this video and the title "BTBAM COULROPHOBIA DRUM COVER". I might have chuckled out loud, even... Mark Castillo's performance on the Silent Circus album stands for me as one of the most beautiful and cohesive metal drumming feats ever, and to think of some random kid sitting in the dark even being able to keep up was a funny idea to me.

so i watched it for a good laugh, and instead- i was wide-eyed and headbanging the whole time. he NAILED it. even the fills, and even with his own style. he seems kinda nervous in the beginning, but once you hit the five minute mark on that video.... look at the look on that kid's face! that is what metal is about! fuck yea!

and 400 views? are you joking me? this is a great performance, watch it

Indecision - Some of the First Hardcore I Ever Heard

I don't remember who showed me this band first, but at some point in high school in 1998 someone asked if i'd heard Indecision, and i acquired a burned cd, as was becoming a brand new thing to do in the days of nascent 56k and napster technologies. As a pissed off skate rat teenager, i liked it from the first scream. it was so much more radical and truly pissed off than any watered down punk that was more well-known. It needed no explanation, I immediately "got it" and rocked bands like this, refused, sick of it all, vision of disorder, and some older earth crisis. I loved the antireligious overtones as well.

in their song "dead", 2:00 minutes into the above video, that was the first proper pit call to mosh part I ever heard anywhere.

I was a little kid so I can't give you too much history or follow up about this band, but the music is memorable to me.

Blonde Redhead - Are On Some Next-Level Shit

I got their Penny Sparkle on vinyl when it was new, without previewing it first because of Blonde Redheads rock solid pedigree. Every so often there are groups like Blonde Redhead that manage to never put out a bad record, and from the beginning seem to have a cohesive idea of what they are about and what they are doing.

I wasn't disappointed. On the first superficial listens, I thought their sound was getting a little too electro shoegaze for me, with their notable increase in use of electronic beats and elements. But after I let it set in for many listens, I realized it was totally beautiful and worked really well, and they remained to be about what they've always been about for me... the beautiful, breathy, haunting vocals of Kazu Makino.

Here is the first track off that album performed flawlessly true to the recording. As if that left any doubt, her outfit and barely there swaying and rocking "dance moves" in this video really seal the deal of their band being on some next level shit.

Big Mike

Remember when you were 11 years old and you and your friends pooled your allowance together and bought the "Dangerous Minds" soundtrack cd because it had Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise" which was clearly the coolest thing thus far in the decade? Well I do, but after i played out gangster's paradise two or three times, this Big Mike track was all i played after school in 5th grade.

This track "Havin thangs" was definitely the best thing on that album. His whole rant starting at 3:40 is just as pissed off nearly 20 years later... he's got that pissed off thug delivery down that every gangster rapper now has, that i feel like was just starting to emerge at that time. i mean seriously, you go any older than this in rap, and you quickly start getting the funky poppin and lockin delivery of old too $hort or NWA. his delivery here to me has that distinct "modern urban" sound, where its just straight thug and pissed off. i love it.

George Harrison - Someplace Else

I've been on a big kick of trying to unearth and reincorporate music from my 80s childhood into my rotation, for months now! I just remembered the Harrison cassette that my mom had around the house and played a lot in like 1988, his Cloud 9 album.

honest to goodness, i had not heard these tracks since maybe 1992, until i downloaded the album the other month. I remembered the parts to every song like it was yesterday. it instantly brought back memories of hearing it, and i had to study the album for weeks after, to hear it for the first time with an adult ear.

I had this album in my headphones everywhere i biked commuting for several weeks, and on a 50 mile bike trip up the columbia river gorge. "Someplace else" emerged as my clear favorite, and i'm pretty sure there were times when i looped it 3 times on end. I'm still not sick of it, those chord changes are so beautiful and brilliant- that A major 7 to A, going into a C# to D... brilliant! This man has been responsible for some of the most memorable and beautiful melodies and chord changes i've ever known.

Uh oh, am i really going to share something about meshuggah?

I seem to be a minority in the metal world for not really liking Meshuggah. They cross in and out of my line of tolerability. With their horrible band name, douchy "tapout timmy" appearance, and clueless album art, I sometimes want to downgrade them to the ranks of unspeakable acts like disturbed or slipknot. But every so often one of their polyrhythmic grooves grabs hold of me and i can't not headbang, so they just barely hold onto their tolerability for me.

Its also apparent that they influence many contemporaries, whom i feel improve upon their djent polyrhythm ideas and add something meshuggah usually lacks, taste. I'll just throw out say, a life once lost and beneath the massacre to cite examples id rather listen to that might have drawn on some meshuggah.

but anyways, the grooves in this video are fun, and i think this is a perfect example of how to make a heavy metal video. just try to look past what a douche the singer looks like and just headbang.

Tasseomancy - Magical

Tasseomancy are magical.

I first saw their takeaway show, and it may have been Sari and Romy's jaw dropping hotness that initially drew me in to watch their two takeaway clips, but it was their other-worldly mandolin, 1/2 sized nylon guitar, and two part disgustingly-cute female vocals that really impressed and intrigued me and made me want to hear more.

I got their album (formerly they used the name Ghost Bees) and after 1 listen, I thought to myself "I can probably only tolerate to listen to this once, it gets sooooo FEMMY! If i spin it much more times im going to have to take testosterone supplements."
But one song stood out as my favorite, "Vampires", so i kept giving it more chances to play through. before i knew it, their haunting harmonies had crept their way into my brain and engulfed me like the warm arms of a lover. Then, it was all i could listen to for a bit and even the parts that seemed too femmy just became cute and unique.

Their Ghost Bees album definitely DEFINITELY grows on you. i think it takes a few listens through just to understand what exactly you are hearing. it seems like the beautiful sisters from the toronto area turned their backs and middle fingers on whatever their pitchfork-friendly musical contemporaries have been making popular, and instead just look within and deep to the past to draw inspiration. many of their song themes are about their russian jewish grandmother who was a tasseomancer that emigrated to canada to escape persecution.

after many listens, i can't imagine much room for improvement. i dont care where the majority of underground/indie/folk music is headed, im far more interested in these girls' bizarre occultic medieval warbles.

I checked out their new Healthy Hands ep as well, and with their addition of rhythm and spooky synth elements, it sounds like a mix between this first album, jefferson airplane, and black heart procession. 5 stars.

Only You

when i was about 6 or 7, i had this little plastic cassette/radio made for kids. I remember passing by a few whole days just sitting alone in my room on the floor with a blank cassette tape, cued up ready on record, and i would scan the radio. I didn't know jack shit about music, but when I heard something i liked i hit record- my first ever mixtape. That tape was all i listened to for the next year or so, and while i don't remember all the songs it had, I had recorded this song on it and it was the first time i heard it, and loved it.
its a sweet song.

Immortal - Ice Worlds

OH NOOOOO!!! the first face-painted-metal song i've ever liked!!! nooooooooo! It might partly have something to do with the production not sounding like shit, and this KILLER fan video homeboy made. I dig the lyrics and intentional simplicity of all the riffs, its so catchy. And the vocals, yes, they are perfect for the subject matter. I must have stacked 20 plays on this bitch.