My quest for quality metal continues. Unfortunately, I drove into a quite unpleasant brick wall last Monday (April 10) when I went down to Will's Pub for a show headlined by Indorphine. I like these guys and they tend to have decent taste in music, so I was hoping that at least one of the opening bands would be close to what I'm looking for. Nope! Hailing from Port Richey, Primitive Astronauts were a combination of face paint, ridiculous haircuts and aggro'd-out Faith No More/System of a Down homage. Ugh. Knowing that the other bands on the bill – the Chimaira-style viciousness of Stillkept and the execrable nü-retardo stylings of Bobaflex – weren't what I had in mind, Primitive Astronauts was bad enough to make me go home.
Folks, I've got a huge stack of heavy discs on my desk that blow away the immature bullshit of Bobaflex and Primitive Astronauts. If it's heavy and brutal that you want, and you aren't interested in boys wearing masks or makeup, perhaps you should check out Invaders, a compilation of new (not nü-) metal bands like Torche, Pelican, Witch, Black Mountain, High on Fire and, yes, The Sword. Speaking of High on Fire, Matt Pike's other band, Kalas, just released their self-titled debut, which sounds like nothing less than the follow-up to The Word as Law that Neurosis never got around to recording. There's a whole pile of excellent heaviness from the boys over at Hydra Head Records – Oxbow's new double-disc monstrosity, the flailing thud of Big Business, and a goddamn amazing new disc from Scissorfight that's as much rock as it is riffage – that will help teach you heshers what real heaviness sounds like. And, for the old-schoolers, SPV just reissued the good Monster Magnet records: Spine of God and the super-psychedelic 25/Tab EP, while the Melvins' new disc is a straight-through live recording of their Houdini album that, unbelievably, sounds even heavier than the studio version. So with all this excellence just sitting on my desk, what was I doing wasting my time with Primitive Astronauts? It's because I care, kids. It's because I care.
REDUNDANCY, REDUX
Real quick: The worst record ever made thankfully will not be released. Mash-up team The Legion of Doom thought it would be cool to spend a lot of time and effort on an all-mall-punk crossfade bootleg. The result is the 14-track Incorporated, which only proves that all those bands – Taking Back Sunday, From Autumn to Ashes, The Get Up Kids, Thrice, Saves the Day, blah, blah, blah – really do sound the same. Clearance issues, obviously, will prevent this from seeing the light of day.
DOWNLOAD THIS
Hate a local radio show? Love a local radio show? A new online service – www.radioratingz.com – allows listeners who actually care about radio (rather than the Arbitron book-fillers that nobody has ever met) to have a voice. The interface is simple, and allows you to praise/demolish all that is great/horrid on your local dial. Station programmers: Please read this site rather than your Arbitron books when making decisions.
NOTABLE NOTES
I know I just mentioned them last week, but Jacksonville's Asamov are now officially hyped: following their placement in Urb magazine's "Next 100," the Jacksonville hip-hop trio landed in the 10-strong list of "Sounds of the New South." Compiled by staffers from Creative Loafing newspapers in Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Charlotte, the list purports to put its finger on the pulse of the best new music in the Southeast, and I can sorta vouch for it, since I was asked, "Are they worth the hype?" about Summerbirds in the Cellar. I said yes, and I guess they believed me, since the Birds made the list too … Speaking of Summerbirds, I got an e-mail informing me that they were "a national finalist in the Scion Xpress Fest competition" and that they're now "in St. Louis recording a new (their second) album." I already knew both of these things, but since said e-mail came from a certain Summerbird's parents, I felt obliged to mention it … Marc With a C is co-hosting a super-hilarious (if completely dorky) podcast called "The Zanzibar Lounge." You can get it at zanzibar.liberatr.net. Liberatr is also serving up live shows at live.liberatr.net; the first is a Marc With a C show, but the likes of Unicornicopia and Bucket of Nails are also supposed to be on the schedule … Hard Rock Cafe turns 35 in June. (This means I'm only two months younger than the company; where's my corporate office?) Part of the celebration includes a "gala" Classic Albums Live performance of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band with the Orlando Philharmonic; "an amazing dinner" is promised and tickets are $125. (Dinner better be "amazing.")
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