Peste Noire

La Sale Famine De Valfunde (Famine to his friends) is a fucking weirdo. He loves black metal, but hates the black metal scene. The sole point of Peste Noire is to extol the virtues of France, but only medieval France. He hates the internet, but somehow expects the world to listen to his music. He hates you for reading this and he hates me for writing it. He hates because he can. His first album, 2006’s La Sanie des siecles – Panegyrique de la dégénérescence was a fantastic, if relatively straightforward, black metal album that sounded like a big-budget Les Legions Noires. Ever since then, he’s been distancing himself from that sound, letting his music evolve to incorporate different influences, while still retaining BM roots, a knack for experimentation, a ham-fisted dollop of French nationalism, and that god-awful voice of his (think black metal shriek with a mouth full of escargot). Now, with L’Ordure a l’état Pur, he’s gotten even weirder. He’s abandoned all lo-fi aspects, allowed room for more female vocals, and thrown in even more bizarre passages (accordion, electronica, etc.) including more than a few lighter-waving, fist-pumping (totally un-metal, semi-radio rock) breakdowns. The first song sounds like black metal ska polka, the second is industrial math rock black metal disco... This is black metal in the loosest sense of the term. Peste Noire has always been a little too self-serious, self-righteous to a disconcerting extent. Now, he sounds like he’s finally in on the joke, letting his guard down and showing his playful side (though there is a very good chance this album is just another strange manifestation of his über-seriousness). Totally un-kvlt, but still totally rad! Viva la Peste!

Download: Peste Noire - L'Ordure a l'état Pur

-Aaron

Dignan's Notebook

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of the 1996 movie Bottle Rocket, directed by Wes Anderson, and co-written by Anderson and the movie's star, Owen Wilson. The film is about three hapless friends who try to pull of a series of crimes while on the run. The main character is Dignan, played by Owen Wilson. Dignan is a lovable, but optimistically short-witted schemer, hoping to lead his three friends in pulling of a cascading series of crimes that will ostensibly make them all filthy rich. There are a lot of stupid and insignificant problems that only these three friends can trip into, that complicate their plan, and make the movie great.

When you watch the movie, you can't help but hope the happy-go-lucky Dignan will "1. Assemble small team 2. Create cash base...", and then in a matter of just five years "...1. Make wise investments
2. The Robin Hood Principle
a. Establish good will within community
b. Anonymous donations ".

If you've seen the movie, you get a very short shot of Dignan's notebook, but unless you take the time to pause the movie, and meticulously transcribe everything from the frame, then you won't see much. Luckily, someone has done just that. And here it is:

Dignan's Notebook

Cat-tastrophe

I love my grandma, but she can't put the cat in the washing machine for a ten minute cycle and get away with it.

My 80 year old grandmother lives on her own, with her odd little cat Ringo. Apparently, Ringo had decided to take a little cat nap in the washing machine right before my grandmother went into the basement to load her clothes into the washer, a little cat gesture that would other wise be cute. But, Grandma piled the clothes onto poor little Ringo, and Ringo didn't have the faculty to know what was about to happen to him, so he stayed in there and made no noise or significant attempt to escape. Grandma dropped in her last garment, completely unaware that her sweat pants had come alive and were squirming around in the bottom of the washer. She shut the lid, set the timer for 30 minutes, and walked away.

Ten minutes later she heard a thumping noise and an incredible squelching sound, it was the noise of little Ringo running on the mouse wheel to hell, screaming. I can imagine the poor guy running for a few rotations, and then getting whipped around onto his back, and then regaining footing briefly, over and over. Grammy came in and opened the door to the washer and Ringo shot to the ceiling and then scampered away at lightening speed. Grandma continued the rinse cycle. Ringo doesn't sleep in the washing machine anymore.

Lun Yurn

Goddamn, I fucking love Burmese. For those of you who don't know, Burmese is a local group of audio terrorists who, over the past 12 years, have consistently, creatively, and crushingly mixed powerviolence, sludge, grindcore, doom, and free noize into a pulverizing and idiosyncratic concoction that may not have garnered them any real fame, but has certainly made them notorious throughout the Bay Area. Their revolving lineup of musicians, the only constants of which are two bassists named Mike, has included many drummers (including John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees) and singers, but never any guitarists, making for a primal low-end assault equal parts Whitehouse, early Swans, Man is the Bastard, and that drunk homeless dude yelling at you on Muni. They're currently rounded out by two drummers and Tissue, their deceptively petite female vocalist whose throat-shredding growl would put the most massively muscled metal meathead's to shame.

Burmese is more than a band, they're a perpetually evolving, ridiculously tenacious media beast. They've thrown care to the wind, (seemingly) effortlessly switching musicians, labels, and genres as if it were the most natural thing in the world, without ever compromising their quality or content. In fact, they've only gotten better. Their new album, 2011's Lun Yurn, is easily one of their best. It's way more technical than its predecessors, and decidedly more "metal," at turns dense and confusingly intricate, loose and sprawlingly abstract, and proggy without resorting to the styling's usual self-righteous wankery. It's a very rewarding listen, full of surprises, not the least of which is the last song, an absolutely batshit insane, relentlessly brutal 45-minute improvisational noise jam that not only proves it's ok for music to be painful again, but that it can be rapturous too. Burmese hurts so good.

Download: Lun Yurn

-Aaron

Sarah Dunsworth xoxoxo

Annie Hardy

The End Is Extremely Fucking Nigh

The Body is comprised of two demonic dudes from Providence, Rhode Island, notable for their big beards, bigger paunches and ridiculous gun collection, who play a particularly dour and dreary style of doom that fuses down-tuned droning dirges, overblown punch-in-the-gut drums and grief-stricken black metal vocal histrionics. They've run with this formula for about a decade, consistently doing it justice while still finding time to churn out extreme metal covers of songs by artists as disparate as Body Count, Danzig and Sinead O'Connor. However, it is on their newest album, 2010's All the Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, that they have truly come into their own, crafting a collection of songs that are tighter, better constructed and even more brutal than before. The most apparent development in The Body's sound is the wealth of actually tasteful experimental flourishes they've incorporated (washes of noise, tribal chanting, moog, orchestral instruments, etc.), which transcend the superfluousness of the gimmicks many bands masquerade as "avant-garde." The Body understands that change is sometimes necessary, and they wear that change well. The album's first song begins with 7 minutes of all-female a capella choral music (courtesy of the Assembly Of Light Choir), and it only gets weirder from there. Check out song-of-the-year contender "Empty Hearth," the aural equivalent of SunnO))) and Ministry heading out into the night and curb-stomping some Tuvan throat singers.

In the download link I have also included the self-titled record by Dead Times, the totally rad black metal/noise project started by one of the two guys in The Body (the guitarist/singer, I think). Dead Times is the product of a seriously fucked up mind. It sounds like some lonely soul sitting in his basement, meticulously obsessing over the creation of his lo-fi sound collages and then trying to shriek them into oblivion. But, like, I guess that's exactly what it is...

Download: The Body / Dead Times!!

-Aaron

Sieg Howdy!

All right folks, this is my first post here so I thought I would kick things off with an album that is not only one of my favorites, but also one of the most joyfully deranged, darkly humorous, absurdly catchy and disgustingly overlooked records of all time.
Dory Tourette and the Skirtheads were a little-known late-'90s, early-2000s Oakland punk entity on S.P.A.M Records associated with other like-minded bands such as Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children Macnuggits, The Rabbis, and Fleshies. Dory Tourette (né Dory Ben-Shalom) was the band's singer, songwriter and guitarist, a drug-addled troubadour who subverted the best parts of Bay Area punk, twangy country and oldies à la Buddy Holly in order to craft melodic gems glorifying malt liquor, crystal meth, pedophilia and essentially everything else your mom told you was wrong. Unfortunately, the band's stint as resident accidental geniuses was as temporary as it was miraculous. They released an LP, an EP, and a song on a S.P.A.M compilation before Dory tragically passed away in October, 2007, at the age of 28, a victim of his longtime substance abuse.
DT&tS's aforementioned LP Rock Immortal was produced by none other than Matty Luv (shortly before his tragic death) in something like 1999, and it might just be the best album you've never heard. Listen deeper than its offensive, often cynical surface and you'll hear a very human--and humane--look at just what it means to be down on your luck and at odds with society. Equal parts existential crisis and celebration of life outside the norm, it is at turns wistful, vile, ecstatic, raunchy and truly beautiful.
Rock Immortal is very dear to me. It has helped me through some hard times and made many good ones that much better, and I can think of no better way of starting my tenure in the blogosphere than by sharing it with you.

Download: Rock Immortal!

-Aaron