Prurient - Pleasure Ground

Note: This is the first in what will be occasional album reviews. The only way I review an album is if I feel it is FUCKING amazing or FUCKING abismal. This is the first. I also listened to this album at night after I got angry at Kelly. So it just made sense to listen to an angry record. It probably affected the way I wrote this.

So Colin informed me that the radio station recieved a huge package of shit from Load records. I've managed to rip most of the stuff we recieved but there are still some other albums I need. One of the albums that was sent to us was the latest Dominick Fernow release, "Pleasure Ground".

For those who don't know who Dom Fernow is, he goes by the noise alias of PRURIENT. I saw him in 2005 with Wolf Eyes and ever since then I've been hooked on the guy. The man is fucking incredible to watch live and to listen to on record. His albums like "The History of AIDS" and "Troubled Sleep" have kept me up many nights paranoid about whether or not I should go to sleep.

His last release "Black Vase" was his most accessible as well as commercial. It has been his most sucessful release and it was a damn good record with drums that made me cringe. I listened to it non-stop and slowly began devolving into the gaunt, harsh noise junky/perveor/creator that I am today. I attribute most of my artistic aspiration to the Wolf Dudes and Dom.

This latest album, "Pleasure Ground" is without a doubt his opus. It is his masterpiece. I don't even know where to begin with how incredible this album is. I am only pissed that I couldn't hear it last year so I could put it as the best album of the year which it definitely would have been.

The album is 4 tracks of harsh noise/feedback/no-wave synth loops that drone, weave and decimate the mind in just under 40 minutes. The first track "Military Road" kicks it off with just a destructive beat that is enhanced by Dom's devestating vocals. They are the rawest they have ever been and also the most disturbing. The screams and howls make me want to get up and punch a hole in your face. The track ends with Dom scream-repeating the phrase, "The badge of punishment." Ohhhh man. If that doesn't give you goosebumps, then you aren't alive. I know it made my skin tingle and my blood boil.

The next track Earthworks/Buried a Secret is a two-part symphony of brutality that starts off dissonant enough and then builds up into this frenetic burst of dissonant synth loops and aural assaults on the listener. This is by far the best track on the album as the unsettling synth drone just adds so much to an already upsetting song. You think it will get better but it just gets worse and worse and by the end of it you just want to curl up into a ball and scream until you puke up blood.

The third track outdoorsmen/indestructible is another track that starts of droney and ends in a cacaphonic collage of chaos. Dom employs a slower harsh beat in this track that at times sounds as if someone is being smashed in the head with a hammer. "Indestructible" is a perfect way to describe the track as well as PRURIENT in general.

The last track "Apple Tree Victim" is just an all out brawl. Dom finishes everything up by attacking the listener until they are forced to accept what is going on. It's another harsh masterpiece similar to some of the tracks on "Troubled Sleep", except the lyrics are much more disturbing. "Apple Tree Victim" gives off false hope to anyone thinking the album will end nicely as the apple tree is just a front for a much more disturbing sound. As a matter of fact with lyrics like "does our death turn you on", "badge of punishment" and "the final cum", the whole album pretty much acts as one big forced S&M experience.

And really this is what the album does. The album forces itself upon the listener by attacking it, settling it down so as it accept your punishment, and once again unleashing a disturbing amount of pain. The album acts as an audbible rape to the listener. At first you might struggle and writhe in pain, sorrow, tears and suffering but by the end of the album you've laid back and accepted what is happening. With the final lyric being, "the final cum", it's easy to see that by the end of this thing even Dom knows he has raped you and everything you ever believed in. This is easily his best album and one of the best noise albums of all time.

Warning: if you don't like noise or industrial, don't listen to this album. YOU WILL BE OFFENDED and YOU WILL NOT LIKE WHAT YOU HEAR. With that said, even if you do like noise, you should probably prepare yourself for the album. I know I didn't and now I sit here in the dark, crying wishing the sun would rise.
- CHRIST

Scumbag Casanova

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Wrestling Society X

So there's this new wrestling entertainment thing that recently began to be televised. It's called Wrestling Society X and it's on MTV2. I had been hearing many things about it's high paced action and rumors of it being televised for quite some time. Only recently did it come to fruition that the wrestling show was able to be put on a half hour television slot between Road Rules and Bam's Unholy Union both of which are terrible shows that have lost all the luster the stars originally had.

The first thing I noticed about Wrestling Society X was its announcer, Kris Kloss. Back in the day, when I was a snotty pre-teen/teen there was this awesome underground wrestling circuit known as XPW based out of L.A. I went to some shows and they were the only real wrestling shows I ever went to. They were fucking amazing because the bastards actually got hurt and were hurled into crazy shit like beds of barbed wire stacked on top of tables that had thumbtacks and it was all on fire...yeah this was the wrestling federation that Kris Kloss was the announcer of. It was awesome.

Kris Kloss has always been a rip off of Joey Styles but he was a cool rip off. And there was a comical element to him and XPW that appealed to me. Plus there were porn stars that got naked and at 13, this is the greatest thing in the world.

This new show, Wrestling Society X seems as if its trying to revive all of that with props that are rigged to explode and tables galore. But the problem is that its so contrived. It's so fake that it hurts to watch and not in that WOW way, but in that way you would watch a Steven Segal movie. The fact that the stunts are so fucking fake and that it's all overproduced so that it fits conveniently into a half hour slot is fucking weak. Matches aren't meant to last 30 seconds, even if they are 30 good seconds of action.

The one thing I will say about WSX that is good is that in terms of talent, they got the cream of the underground crop. They have some people that do unbelievable shit like shooting-star press leg drops and kamikaze leg twists that look fucking amazing. That's the shit that makes me go WOW. They got people like Kaos, Youth Suicide, White Trash Johnny Webb and a bunch of new kids that can do some great shit and sell things really well. Despite its potential though, these things are only shown in clips or cut together with a bunch of other sensationalized footage that adds nothing and gives the moves no build-up. It's obvious that the people producing this are young and know nothing of Wrestling Entertainment.

WSX is lacking many things. While it has the potential for great action, it can't compete with TNA because TNA is simply the best in terms of athletics and in-ring action. While they may not have the high risk amazing moves as WSX to the maximum capacity, they still do have people doing amazing shit in the ring and they know how to sell it, WITH BUILD UP. The build up to the amazing moves it the most important part. We can see Petey Williams do Canadian Destroyers for 15 seconds straight if he were in WSX and it would be cool, but the fact that this move usually comes at a crucial or sudden point in the match leaves the viewer stunned and going, "what the fuck was that!?!?!?"

TNA simply, has better action. Not because they have greater ability but because the men running it are old school and they know how to handle all the great talent to produce a show full of amazing moves and instances that will leave you gasping asking if it's humanly possible that a man can do that with his body.

For WSX in comparison to WWE, the big daddy, there is none. While WSX probably has greater talent, Vince has been doing this since he was a little kid. The production quality is no where near as good and WWE has a two hour time slot which allows for plot and character development, which is why WWE comes off more as a soap opera than a wrestling show. The acting is better,the plotlines are better, and they have an entire team of writers headed by Steph that conconct absurd story lines in the same vein as those bastards that did Melrose Place. And once again WSX is kinda just taking shits when it comes to nuiances such as these.

So basically what I'm getting at is that WSX should be an hour long to give it a sufficient push otherwise it's going to get cancelled. No one watches it and its because you can only watch a guy get "electrocuted" and "blown up" so many times before you change the channel to watch something more realistic like the movie "Romeo Must Die". WSX has potential but for now, it's still a fucking joke.

And I know pretty much no one knows what I'm talking about and I look like a giant dumbass but whatever. I follow this stupid shit. And you smell and you suck it. At least my girlfriend is hot.

- Caspiar

Scumbag Casanova

Friday, February 09, 2007

Thom Yorke Doesn't Like You, Shitty Indie Band With Keyboards

In the past 10 years there has been an increase in bands coming out claiming to be "experimental", very few of which are actually original and capable of emitting some sort of response from me. More specifically, it seems that every band that came out and followed a carbon copy of an "experimental" indie band drew comparisons to Radiohead. Phrases like, "people are calling them the next Radiohead" or "similar to Radiohead," were thrown around for every two bit indie band that came along with keyboards and some sort of electronic background. Even good bands that didn't have anything to do with that sound like Broken Social Scene or Mogwai were tagged with that "Radiohead-esque" sound used by outlets like Fuse TV or MTV 2. People ate it up and listened to these bands as if they were cultured and up to date on the music scene.

For Radiohead, I'm sure they look at trends such as this one and shake their heads. Every band and their mother name them as an influence. Hell, you might as well look at Panic at the Disco and call them "Radiohead-esque". They have keyboards and electronic shit. It seems as if the music world and the public for that matter is missing the point. It is the original bands that truly make a dent in the world and those willing to be associated with a trend will do either one of two things: go along with that crappy trend until it fades out (Nu-Metal, Garage Rock, etc) or do things on their own terms. The latter group of bands tends to find themselves with great success, personal satisfaction and an overall catalog of great music.

When Radiohead first debuted in America with their album, "Pablo Honey" they were associated with the trend at the time. That trend was that bastard of a term called, "grunge". Radiohead became a huge entity over night on the heels of their breakthrough hit "Creep", a song that Johnny Greenwood actually admits he tried to sabotage through the crunching of those rough guitar chords before the chorus (which ironically made the song a hit).

After that album Radiohead went off in a completely different direction. The full transition wasn't evident yet but "The Bends" showed that they were moving some where else with their sound. Grunge had died and while the new sound upset many stupid fans, it garnered respect from true music lovers. "OK Computer" was the Gold Standard and by the time "Kid A" Radiohead was fully dedicated to their music on their own terms. They had moved passed the media and music outlets decrying them for changing (namely brands like SPIN) and progressed into a full fledged musical force, relevant to music and the world.

This isn't about how wonderful Radiohead is though. Personally, while I enjoy many of their songs, I always felt they were a smidge overrated. That doesn't take away from the fact that they MAKE good music. However, I am a noise artist and I can safely say that I am a terrible musician that doesn't know the first thing about how to play any instrument besides drums. At least Radiohead took the time out to master their instruments. After the success of Radiohead, there was a huge influx in the number of bands trying to carry that same flag and forge their own niche, oddly enough with a sound that had been used before. Bands like Orbital, Coldplay, The Music (all of which suck major donkey balls), went for that same formula and while it worked for Coldplay, the only reason why was because they wrote better POP songs and their lead singer was cute and married Gwenyth Paltrow. If they never met, we wouldn't be talking about Coldplay anymore. It's just like if Pam hadn't married Kid Rock, we wouldn't be talking about him because he's a redneck has-been.

So many bands have piggy-backed onto Coldplay's success that it gets pretty fucking ridiculous as to who claim to listen to Radiohead for influence in sound. Bands like Panic at the Disco or even Angels and Airwaves, bands that fucking suck so much ass, are both listening to Radiohead and trying to duplicate their way of thinking. "Dude that guitar part is so spacey, like Radiohead". In Panic at the Disco's case, they simply threw keyboards onto their already shitty sound and without even playing a show, got signed to a label based on the fact that people thought they were Fallout Boy and Radiohead offspring. That is a direct insult. The only way "Panic" (not the great hardcore band but short for the gay disco punk band) might be related to Radiohead is if Radiohead fucked a really dumb slut like a Blink-182 while they were drunk and abusive. Note: they probably hit Blink during intercourse and made them cry as they were ejaculating.

I guess the reason I have a problem with people characterizing bands as the next Radiohead has to do with the fact that every time someone says that it dismisses the idea that originality exists and the fact that there are original bands out there doing there own thing, the way they want. The only band I can think of right now that is gaining in popularity again and taking the same "course" as Radiohead is Liars. Now I am not saying that Liars sound like Radiohead or that they are the next Radiohead in any way. They are extremely different sounding in all aspects with regards to their experimentation and the direction they are taking with their music. However, what I am saying is that Liars, similar to Radiohead, were once grouped in with a passing trend in music and that they have broken off from that--just as Radiohead did--and doing their own thing.

Liars debut full length, "They Threw Us In a Trench and Stuck a Monument On Top" was an album that while being embraced by the indie community, simultaneously lambasted it and the music culture for categorizing bands, sticking them into a trend, and watching as they come up in references for shows like "Gilmore Girls". That show oddly enough goes out of its way to mention every single "indie" band they can think of in a span of 20 seconds. The brilliance of Liars was that while being loved and revered as "saviors of indie and rock'n roll" they were making fun of it at the same time, as evident in the title of the album. The funny part was that it was made implicitly and none of the music jerk-offs or dumbass indie kids picked up on it. They just assumed it was the band being "artsy" when really it was the band telling the rest of the world to "fuck off".

It was right there in the title. They weren't going to take that shit from anyone. So then it should have come as no surprise to TRUE MUSIC FANS when their next album, "They Were Wrong, So We Drowned" went in a completely different direction as they hinted at it in their debut album and the e.p they released afterwards. Yet, as soon as their anticipated follow-up came out, it garnered some of the worst reviews of an album for a band, receiving the lowest possible grade from Rollingstone and SPIN. I guess Liars knew what they were doing though and knew that Rollingstone and SPIN are two of the worst music publications this side of the earth. I bet North Korea has better music publications and they only have to write about one person.

Nonetheless, Liars had succeeded in predicting their future again with their implicit statements in their album titles. The critics were in fact wrong about Liars. They weren’t a typical dance-punk, New York band that was going to continue to produce the same crap over and over again ala VHS or Beta. And so because of this, Liars drowned in a sea of bad reviews and low record sales. Yet despite this they were not phased and when any other band would have called it quits or quickly banged out an album returning to their old stuff. Instead, Liars moved to Jamaica.

The result was last year's "Drum's Not Dead" (another prophetic album title), an album that while I personally didn't agree with, put them back on the map in the eyes of many. This was an album that once again took the band in a new direction and that established them as artists. While the album to me, has its faults, you can’t deny a band when they have conviction and music to back it up. "Drum's Not Dead" holds up not for its particularly amazing musicianship or anything, but as a solid statement to the music establishment, "FUCK YOU."

But really it should come as no surprise. Liars like Radiohead, know what they are doing. They are blazing their own trail and getting out of a shadow. I realize by linking them to Radiohead that might devalue their work, but I'm not trying to draw comparisons between the bands' works. All I'm trying to say, is that this is what good bands do. They know music critics are full of shit and they make their own music wherever and whenever they damn well please. The two bands have shared similar career turns thus far, but the two sounds are distinctly their own. You know a Radiohead song when you hear it and you know a Liars song when you hear it.

So the next time Sway or Jim Shearer tells you this band has "drawn comparisons to Radiohead" I urge you to break the television or if you can't afford it, turn it off and watch some porn. It's a lot more constructive and rewarding than watching either of those two pricks. Besides if you're getting your music info from MTV2, you probably already have some issues and will watch that weird porno shit anyway. Better now than later.

- CHRISTopher.

Scumbag Casanova

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Reasons I Love Death From Above 1979

DFA 1979 was an amazing band for many reasons. Apparently unbeknownst (I don't know how to spell) to me the band broke up last year. It pisses me off because I actually had a chance to see them at Koos right before they blew up. The next week I saw them on Conan and I was like, "damn, they've hit it big time." There were many reasons why I loved them and why they still stand up as an amazing band that didn't get the credit they deserve.

1.) They simply kicked ass. - As stupid as it sounds, they were an amazingly talented band and all they were, were a drum and bass duo. Essentially take all the effects out of Lightning Bolt and you had DFA 1979. But the brand of music they played was so rythmic and awesome that it made you dance no matter how tough you were. "You're a Woman..." still stands out as one of the best albums of 2004 and one of the best in the past decade. All the songs were amazing and all it took was drums and a bass.

2.)They were in Black Cat 13. - That band ruled. They were on 31g and released shit with the locust. To this day, DFA is one of the few bands that made it out of that scene into bigger success.

3.) Their performance on Conan - That performance turned me into a believer and I immediately went out and bought the record. The performance was disorganized, all over the place and fucking out of no where Max Weinberg comes in and starts banging the drums. That performance as sloppy as it was, was one of the top 10 Conan performances I have ever seen and I have been watching that show for damn near 10 years now.

4.) They were from Canada. - Despite this, they never associated with any of those arts and crafts kids and they did things their own way. Oh Canada.

5.) They fucked around way too much. - They kicked so much ass and they knew this. They never took anything seriously. They joked around with the media to make people believe they were gay, dead or whatever. They knew what they were doing the whole time and it just added to their coolness.

6.) Romantic Rights - One of the best songs of its genre period. Listen to it and tell me something different.

7.) They knew when to end it. - Unfortunately DFA 1979 was involved in controversy and they were unfairly grouped into that "rock revival" dance-punk craze that made good bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars into one trick ponies. Instead of dragging on the way their contemporaries did, they figured, "we released a great album, blew people's minds, we're done." I love when bands don't hang on and know when it's done. It makes them wiser, cooler and just that much more special.

Death From Above 1979 was an awesome band that I will continue to listen to for as long as I can. If anyone disagrees that's fine, but go listen to "You're a Woman, I'm a Machine" first. It's a classic on my list and a must have. Why? Because DFA owned that hard and kicked THAT MUCH ass. Oh yes, it's damn true.

- $Tek Money$