The Clear EP 1988

The Clear were a Palmerston North band that changed from a five piece band into a trio who later became the amphetamine reptile sounding LUNG and then toured the US and Europe. This EP is closer to the B-52's than the COWS. The song "Roger Says" is about Roger Douglas who was the Minister of Finance at the time. Despite the dated subject of one song it's still an interesting listen.

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Metal Hammer Razor CD

Also in the same issue of Metal Hammer was a compilation that unlike Brutality 101included a write-up in the magazine.

Kicking it off is Deathstars. The band's album scores an 8/10 in the magazine's album review section but to me this track just sounds like Rammstein. Gothic metallers Lacuna Coil have a live track of with female vocals. It doesn't sound that heavy to me partially due to the female vocals. Unearth start with heavy as hell guitar leads and hardcore type shouted vocals. The leads come in and out within the track. The track's not too bad. The Exodus re-recorded track "Metal Command" follows with their brand of butt-kicking Bay Area thrash. Darkthrone's "Grizzly Trade" has a black metal crossed with Motorhead edge so is a great follow up.

Nevermore's track has an 80's Queensryche/Helloween feel largely due to the slightly operatic vocal approach. Edguy play a track that sounds like it could have come Helloween's "Keeper of the Keys" album. The first time I heard of this band was when they played while I was living in Asia. Pretty enjoyable power metal, I missed seeing them but probably would have enjoyed their live output. Sylosis have a vocalist that bring Heartwork era Carcass to mind. The music sounds near death metal but not quite as there's a fair amount of power metal in their mix.

Spylacopa start out sounding like a metalcore band but have some 30 Seconds to Mars type singing in between yelled parts. It didn't surprise me to find out members of The Dillinger Escape Plan are involved here. The Hollow Earth Theory are more of the same but have a more melodic approach. Firebrand Super Rock play ballsy Judas Priest influenced metal with female vocals nearly as strong Doro's heavier Warlock material. Green River Project have Alice Cooper vocals but the song really shows off the guitarwork of Mick Priestly. The Enforcer track "Black Angel" is fast metal and made me think of actually listening to the fairly forgettable Vicious Rumours "Digital Dictator" album for the second time in years.
Diamond Drive sound like Rock Radio fodder as does Six. The true test of a compilation is both whether the listener would seek full albums out and if it gets another listen. Out of all the artists on the disc I'd only seek out Exodus and Dark Throne albums if I was unfamiliar with them. I might play the Green River Project again but I'm not convinced enough to dig further.

Brutalism 101

The latest issue of Metal Hammer (February here) on the shelves comes with two free CDs. The CDs are twofold in that they are vehicles for the magazine to sell more issues and to get bands known. Like most compilations they're a mixed bag. The Brutalism 101 CD is largely death metal as the title states.

First band up The Breathing Process are generic noisy death metal with grunts. Next up are the clumsily name Annotations of an Autopsy who sound like they're huge Morbid Angel fans but they also come across as bland. The Red Shore were fairly recent visitors to New Zealand. Pig grunts are laid on over the top of well played metal with varying tempo changes. As a counter too this, The Irish Front's track starts with melodic vocals but then grunts enter the fray. A Girl A Gun A Ghost have an emo-band type name but it's metalcore that uses "Far Beyond Driven" as a blueprint but lurking in the background there's a symphonic metal band with melodic girly vocals that really wants to get out.

Forever Never have an incredibly boring name. The vocals are the good cop/bad cop variety with melodic clean vocals and then gravelly shouting. The yelled vocals are an asset because the band's going through the motions without any real enthusiam. Glamour of The Kill starts off much better and sounds like an intensely brutal death metal band during the intro but then end up sounding like a lot of the melodic pop punk that Epitaph Records was pushing during the nineties.

(The) Plasmarifle start out as a brutal yet mid-paced killing metal machine but the song tapers off towards the end. The band are fond of overlong titles. The song is called "Haunted by the Ghost of a Dead Actress" and their album is mindbogglingly titled "The World Forever Changed in an Instant". Why not just go with "The World Instantly Changed" or better still, "The World Changed".
The vocalist on the Last House on The Left track sounds like a hissing snake and apart from the drum clicks the song is more in line with mainstream metal. Post-Mortem Promises have a more deathly metal feel and there's a hardcore lean with grinding guitars. I wouldn't mind hearing a full album from this band. The Red Death aren't bad either with thrashy with accessible throaty vocals. The last track "Set A Fire In Our Flesh" by Martriden is the highlight with its quiet intro building up to a well controlled blackened death metal finale.

Seaweed 1990 EP

Washington, Tacoma band Seaweed's Weak album was recommended to me a while back. I checked out and while it wasn't a bad album, it wasn't one I was going to rush back and listen to. My analysis was that it was a well titled album. According to Wikipedia (which is often as useful but less truthful than the instructions on a shampoo bottle) the band mix grunge and punk. I just hear Cruz records Big Drill Car type melodic punk on this EP which isn't bad but isn't great either. Maybe your opinion differs. Write a comment and let us know.

Bang!

Lime Spiders

I'm not overly fond of youtube blog posts unless I've done the filming as it seems a cheap way of pulling up someone else's work and passing it off as your own. This issue has to come up time to time with cover songs. Do you remember when The Goo Goo Dolls were good? Check out "Superstar Carwash" or "Hold Me Up" if you don't believe me. They had a tasty choice of covers back then and handpicked song from The Replacements and The Plimsouls. In fairly recent times they've been looking toward to Australia and have chosen The Lime Spiders. I don't know how this fits with their other live material as I stopped caring about this band years ago but came across this youtubage not too long ago. If youtube comments are anything to go by Lime Spiders' frontman Mick Blood is tying to work out a way to receive royalties from The Goo Goo Dolls.



Here's some live footage from a Lime Spiders show from a week before Christmas last year.



I bet they were a far more energetic live band back in the late 80's. I remember seeing their "The Cave comes Alive" record album in a secondhand junk shop for $1, sometime in the early 90's, along with a few other Aussie 80's alternative rock albums plus a few others but the only album I bought was a treasured but very much pre-loved copy of MC5's "Kick Out The Jams". I went back a few days later to grab the Lime Spiders album but it had vanished from the cardboard boxes.

Black Friday with John Doe and Jim White

Black Friday, March 13, 2009 was indeed a lucky day for live music fans in Wellington. Head Like A Hole who are now known as HLAH were playing a sold out reunion gig at Mighty Mighty. However that sold out at least a week before the band were due to take the stage.
Black Chrome were playing a show with one wolfman band, Boss Christ at the Adelaide tavern. However I passed both those up to see John Doe of X and Jim White play alt-country at the San Francisco Bath House. I wasn't familiar with the solo material of either so went in with a fairly open mind. I arrived at the time the doors opened to find a local band already playing. They were called Blackwater and very much a country band.



John Doe played first and his country tinged solo material impressed. His stage banter included introducing a song as an auto-biographical murder song and stating that Nick Cave writes a lot of Murder songs but has never written an auto-biographical one and a speech on how the old punk guys are dropping like flies yet all of Fleetwood Mac are still alive.
He played a couple of songs with Jim White on guitar.



I'd never heard of Jim White before attending this show but his brand of alternative country won me over in a live setting. Although this could be due to that his between song speeches made for interesting listening. Confessing to looking out the hotel window and timing the length of a trick at Il Bordello led to a story about him, while being a good Southern Christian boy, selling sunblock at a whorehouse in his city. There were also stories of surfing in tornado storms while on acid.



John Doe joined him on stage for a few songs. While I enjoyed Jim White live, it's John Doe's solo output that I'm more interested in digging up for a listen. Lesson learned: alt-country is not be a genre to be written off.

Neoshark - The Extreme Purgatory - Taiwanese metal

What we have here is an EP from a Taiwanese metal band called Neoshark who wear their influences on their sleeves. They're heavily influenced by Sepultura, Slipknot and Biohazard. The band's lyrics are mostly in Mandarin Chinese. The song Democracy Terrorist echoes Biotech is Godzilla in both sound and theme. The band are now known as Temple of the Brain although their Chinese band moniker is unchanged. The band see themselves as a Chinese band rather than a Taiwanese band so are unlikely to be confronting the UN any time soon.

Gimme Gimme.