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45 Grave – Pick Your Poison (Frontier)
45 Grave are one of my all-time favorite LA bands, so to me, anything they do is genius. This is their first studio album in 25 years and it is wildly adventurous and bold, very different from their mid-80’s material. This lineup features Dinah Cancer, Frank Agnew (The Adolescents, TSOL) as well as new additions Brandden Blackwell and drummer Tom Coyne. Love the new recording of “Akira Raideen”, retitled here simply as “Akira”. A few of the newer songs are pop-oriented, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. “Johnny” and “A Desert Dream” are pure americana that really work in this context. “Sorceress” and “Highway 666” are classic 45 Grave horror rock dirges with giant choruses, the kind you want to hear on a boombox when you’re partying in a graveyard with your friends late at night.
No Statik – Everywhere You Aren’t Looking (Prank)
Off-the-wall female fronted punk from the San Fran bay. Ten new songs, including a strange fourteen minute opener called “Unclarified”. Everything about this is great.
Redd Kross – Researching The Blues (Merge)
Redd Kross for president. That’s all I’m saying. You can either get on board or be left on the sidelines. Easily their best material since the early 90’s.
White Lung – Sorry (Deranged)
Ten new songs from White Lung, once on the verge of breaking up (are they, aren’t they?) but now rebounding, taking their high energy punk in an uncharted direction. Had the chance to see them this summer on their American tour, they didn’t look very thrilled to be playing together, but then again, I didn’t have to sit in a van with them for 5 weeks.
Ignition – Complete Services (Dischord)
They finally got around to remastering all of the Ignition records, perhaps in an effort to save the best for last. Not sure why Dischord is saying “collection also includes an unreleased cover of the Vibrators song, Keep it Clean” because that song has been released, specifically on the previous CD version. Still though. This band continues to inspire me both musically and politically. Friends have commented on my level of commitment to this band earnestly, saying “but this band is a total bummer”. I don’t disagree with that statement, but it hasn’t changed my opinion. In a sea of Operation Ivy and Green Day clones, sure OK, they look pretty drab. But behind all that gloom is Alec’s lyrics, they are both positive and constructive at all times, even as they grew more and more disillusioned with hardcore and punk. Had they stuck it out for another year or two who know’s what might have happened, they were breaking up just as Fugazi and Nation of Ulysses were taking off. PLUS, Ignition is (arguably) the band that started the push towards detail oriented graphic design in hardcore. Everything before them was slop, a mash of cut and paste, recycled black and white photos from Vietnam and nonsense. Their Machination LP was (is) a packaging dream come true, it is conceived and executed with a precision rarely seen, it undoubtedly inspired hundreds of other bands to pay closer attention to their artwork.
Dropdead – Discography 1991-1993 (Armageddon)
Complete discography resequenced, now available on one glorious slab of colored vinyl.
Hoax s/t 7” (Painkiller)
Yes. Yes. Yes. That IS the way that I like it.
Kiss – Destroyer Resurrected (Def Jam)
Resequenced and remastered version of Destroyer. This is their classic LP, the beginning of the end. Peter Criss has admitted that during this recording (at the old Record Plant in NYC) he started doing cocaine, this is also when Ace started his no-show policy. iTunes has 11 of the tracks up now, but the 2 disc set comes out next week and apparently has a bonus disc filled with studio outtakes and rehearsals (I’ll believe it when I see it). Simmons also said “It will feature the artwork that was not used on the original release, rejected by Casablanca Records for depicting violence”. I like the new art, but again, I find it hard to believe Simmons. It is doubtful that this was drawn in 1975, especially knowing that Simmons & Stanley had carte blanche status with Casablanca AND that Julian Gill never mentioned this artwork in any of his epic books. Bullshit marketing aside, this mix is a vast improvement over the original. Kiss loves to omit chunks of their own history, never mentioning that Destroyer was the first record they wrote with outside help – in this case Kim Fowley, Mark Anthony and Ezrin on lyrics and Dick Wagner filling in on guitar on “Flaming Youth” and “Sweet Pain” while Ace was out drinking all night and playing cards. So the real highlight of this remastered record for me is “Sweet Pain” with Ace playing. It has to be heard to be believed. I have no idea why they deleted his track to begin with, because it sounds a hundred times better than Wagner’s. Also, WTF is this on Def Jam?
Circle Jerks – My Career As A Jerk DVD
Documentary by David Markey. Looking forward to this train wreck. So much of this band is a mystery, so many questions unanswered. Original drummer Lucky Lehrer is still one of them (namely how can he be that good and still play so fast?) Hetson and Morris make up the other questions, both of them have been pretty quiet about almost everything, perhaps until now. I have some personal guilt about Hetson, about ten years ago I walked in on him backstage at a Bad Religion show in a state of undress. It was too late to back out of the room: pants noticeably absent, wangs already in a state of flopping, awkward apologies seemed pointless, but I tried anyway.
Bands that steal from Black Sabbath
Listen, Black Sabbath is great, you’ll get no argument from me. Part of what makes them great is that they are basically untouchable, they exist firmly in our minds as permanently stoned somewhere back in 1973. When you start taking their artwork apart (see Sleep, Electric Wizard) you are messing with that feeling. When you name your band “Blue Sabbath Black Cheer” and you find yourself releasing $42 LP’s housed in poly-acryclic sleeves, you’ve clearly crossed a line. I only say that because these bands are neither paying tribute to Sab in a tongue-in-cheek manner (because none of this shit is funny in any capacity) OR playing off of their audience (because how can any of them really care?). I realize that stoner rock is a very closed-door genre that eats it’s own waste, message received loud and clear. But this shit is downright silly. Really. If you’re that heavy and you’re that profoundly mystical, and you’re that into writing Iommi-style riffs inspired by Peyote trips gone bad, then the least you can do is come up with something original to say about it.
