Friday, July 11, 2008

Tilt- Play Cell (1993)




Tilt came out of the East Bay/Gilman street punk scene. This album is Tilt's first full length. Tilt are a female fronted punk band with strong vocals provided by Cinder Block. Play Cell is their debut which came out on Lookout Records but Tilt's later album releases are on Fat Wreck Chords. The song Crying Jag which is on Play Cell also appears in the Glory Daze movie soundtrack.
Crying Jag can be heard on the Tilt myspace page.
Tilt only lasted until 2001 however singer Cinder Block went on to provide punkier vocals for Retching Red.

Get Tilt - Play cell

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Grim Force - Circulation to Conclusion


I keep seeing Municipal Waste mentioned in various places that discuss punk and metal on the net. With Municipal Waste a fun game is spot the eighties influences. If their logo isn't a nod to Nuclear Assault then some of their cover artwork is although the cover to Waste 'Em All looks closer to Sodom's Persecution Mania album.

However back in the 80's a lot of Japanese bands were playing thrash metal and there were more metal bands around Japan than just Loudness. There was a Japanese black metal band called Sabbat, thrashers, Raging Fury, another called Sacrifice and a power metal band called Salem who were more on the Iron Maiden side of metal(I know this because I owned their demotape but it has unfortunately been misplaced).

Japanese band Grim Force are a lot like Municipal Waste in that they wear their 80's speed metal influences on their sleeves.
The band play Bay Area thrash not dissimilar to Exodus, Death Angel, Testament and early Metallica. I find the album cover reminiscent of Sepultura's Arise and the vocals are also reminiscent of Max Calvera's vocals on the Chaos A.D. album. Live Grim Force are very impressive and that motivated me to buy their CD after the first time I saw them in Taichung, Taiwan in a small club as part of a metal festival. The next time I saw them was on a bigger stage at the Formoz festival in Taipei. Both times their live act impressed me. The CD features riffing that the aforementioned 80's thrash metal bands would be proud of. To hear Grim Force try their myspace page.



Get the album. Arigato.



East meets West in Beijing. Testament with Grim Force.

Beastwars - IV

After over a year off for various reasons, we have returned solely because we wanted to review the new Beastwars album. I really w...