Pagan Altar

One of the more gloomy NWOBHM entries, Pagan Altar from Brockley, England are a band of mythical cult status. Pagan Altar formed in 1978. The band became known for their atmospheric and deeply occult live performances. They often appeared on stage in hooded cloaks in front of an altar, black candles and inverted crosses close at hand. They self-released the album Volume 1 in 1982 and soon after, the band unceremoniously split up, but reformed in 2004 and released the godly album Lords of Hypocrisy. 2006 saw the release of another fantastic album titled Mythical & Magical. Along with epic, emotive songs, the crown jewel of the Pagan Altar sound is the inimitable nasal voice of Terry Jones. He sounds like no one else. The whole Pagan Altar vibe is very witchy and wholly British. It's misty English countrysides and stony paths where ancient, unruly sprites loom just out of frame. It's the somber event of a witch trial. It's Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing smoking a joint at Stonehenge. Yes, It's that fucking good.

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My Name Is God...FUCK YOU!!!

Hated Youth were from Tallahassee, Florida. They existed from 1981-1984 and they were every bit as feral as D.R.I., Negative Approach, or Koro. They appeared on the quintessential Florida punk comp We Can't Help It If We're From Florida Here's a bunch of their shit for you. Oh, you did notice that dude is playing while laying on a pillow with a cast on his arm, didn't you? Just checking. Hardcore Rules!!!

Fuck You!!!

If Wishes Were Horses Beggars Would Ride

Sweeney Todd was a Canadian glam band that had amidst its ranks a young Nick "Hot Child In The City" Gilder on vocals and an even younger Bryan "I wrote every shitty song in the 1980s" Adams on guitar. The band scored a minor hit with the tune "Roxy Roller" and then Nick Gilder jumped ship to seek success on his own. For the second album, 1977's If Wishes Were Horses... Bryan Adams assumed the role of singer/songwriter/guitarist for the group. The album is a totally enjoyable slog through Queen-like pomp and Broadway scale cheese. It's almost enough to make you forget that Bryan Adams penned such shit like "Cuts Like a Knife" some short 6 years later. This album is gay, but in the good way.

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Les Legions Noire Part Four: Dzlvarv

Part Four of Cosmic Hearse's profiles of the cult French outsider black metal collective known as Les Legions Noire focuses on Dzlvarv. This project was headed by Vordb Dreagvor Uezeerb of the bands Belketre, Torgeist, and Black Murder. Dzlvarv released one demo in 1996. It typical LLN fashion it is lo-fi, eerie, and bizarre.

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RRR 500

Perhaps the greatest idea for a record ever. RRR 500 is just 500 locked grooves by 500 artists. The needle must be manually placed on each groove to hear it. I have owned two of these albums for years and I don't believe I have heard every track. Once, when I had two turntables and some housemates I fucking hated, I put on two different grooves at full volume, locked my door, and left for work. When I came home they were still going and I had a really funny passive aggressive note taped to my door. Of course this digitized sampling of each groove doesn't compare to actually manipulating the vinyl yourself, but it will have to suffice until you can get your hands on one (or more) of these. Some of the more notable contributors (some unwittingly) are: Little Princess, Deerhoof, Evil Moisture, Mortician, Bastard Noise, Neil Hamburger, Faxed Head, Masonna, and the ubiquitous Sonic Youth. Things like RRR 500 remind us that vinyl is still the coolest format there is and will ever be.

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Grinch

Grinch were a post-hardcore band from Oakland. Grinch included, at one point or another, members of Christ On Parade, Possessed, Fang, Indestroy, Crimpshrine, Sacrilege BC, Machinehead, Amebix, Attitude Adjustment, as well as yours truly. I played drums for Grinch on their last US tour in 1996. The tour was a particularly bizarre and tough one. It was the three regular members of Grinch, with me, and we had Tim from Zygote and Pat the Redneck acting as roadies. Pat brought along his .45, and Tim can sing every Ramones song in German, so of course they were an asset. Some highlights included being woken up in the desert by cops with guns drawn in Arizona, playing a show with Man Is The Bastard in San Diego in which only 10 people came, seeing Eyehategod with Seth from Anal Cunt singing in New Orleans for Mardi Gras, Kirk from Buzzoven igniting a huge fireball in their van while freebasing cocaine, stealing gas, stealing beer, meeting a nazi skinhead with downs syndrome in Kentucky, doing tons of heroin in NYC, hanging with Sockeye in Ohio, and the big gang shootout involving members of Word Salad at the very end of the tour in Albequerque. When we came home we all fucking hated each other. Now, some 12 years later I look back in fondness and I am still very good friends with everyone who went on that tour. This demo tape was recorded shortly before the tour (I don't play on it.) Later on, it was released as a split 12" with fellow Bay Area heavies, Lost Goat. Over the course of their run Grinch released two full-length albums, The Blacking Factory in 1992, and the crushing Eden in 1994 (anyone have a copy they want to give me?) After their breakup, guitarist Mark Marcus went on to play for Damad, Idon Bryant joined Strychnine, and Ron Nichols now plays in both Fracas and Hammers of Misfortune.

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You used to totally be my bro and then you went and got all into drugs and shit and I feel real bad. It's like I don't know you anymore.

Stalag 13 were from Oxnard, California. In 1984 they released In Control, a solid ep of Minor Threat-inspired hardcore. These dudes just wanted to know why you'd rather get high than skate with them. Seriously, bro, what's up with that? Cool cover by comic book artist Jaime Hernandez of Love and Rockets fame. I guess they too have reformed. Wow.

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Oh, please be sure to check out my wish list (right side under the 'Labels') If you have any of these items to sell, trade, or donate on any format please let me know.

¡Satánico!

Este álbum estado traido hasta mi atención por un lector de Hearse Cósmico. El Ritual, de México, jugado excelente musica Satanico y psychedilico. Este álbum es de 1971. Muy extraño, muy bueno, muy satánico.

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Xasthur vs. Acid Enema

This split has long been out of print and highly sought after. Xasthur should need no introduction. The one-man entity from Los Angeles has left an indelible mark on the world of American black metal. Of Xasthur's rather large discography, this is some of his best work. Acid Enema are another black metal band from L.A. Oddly enough, Acid Enema started out doing gabber and hardcore techno music and crossed over to black metal shortly before this release. It works. This was originally released on cd by Total Holocaust Records in 2002.

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Yü-Gung

Einstürzende Neubauten are perhaps one of my all-time favorite bands. I know that some people are intimidated by the sheer number of releases, so I thought it best to post the Yü-Gung ep from 1985. This was my introduction to the sonic klang of Einstürzende Neubauten, and it gives a pretty good idea of what this incredible band is about. You get a remix of the song "Yü-Gung", the Halber Mensch album's version of "Seele Brent", (one of the scariest songs ever recorded), and a beautiful rendition of Lee Hazelwood's "Sand." If you have never listened to Einstürzende Neubauten and you find this to your liking, I highly recommend starting with the albums Halber Mensch and Haus Der Luge. If you are already a fan, grab this ep for the otherwise unreleased material.

Hier

Duuuuuude!!!

Dude! Stop being such a limp-dick, candy-assed queerbait and listen to some motherfucking Cannibal Corpse with your fucking bro. That's Chris Barnes, dude's wicked fucking sick. I know shit ain't goin' too cool for you with your mom marrying that dickwad, and you getting suspended for punching that fucking asstard in gym, but forget that shit for now, bro. Just chill and smoke some of this shit my older brother's buddy brought back from Amsterdam. Oh, fuck dude, you hear that bass player? He's hella fucking brutal, his name's Alex Webster, dude is fucking sick. This song is killer. It's called "Scattered Remains, Splattered Brains,"duuuuuuude. "Prepare to witness a place of gore/Of legal dissection and blood on the floor/Carved up corpses, in the corner/Sliced up by a psychotic coroner/Slice, dice, chop them haphazardly/Like laboratory mice, splatter brain matter/Pound on the skull until it shatters." How fucking sick is that shit, bro? Dude, things are gonna get better, they fucking gotta, man. Soon we'll be 18 and we can get the fuck out of this bullshit town. We can get a place in the city and start our fuckin' band, bro. We'll play some sick ass brutal shit, bro. Oh fuck, "Born in a Casket." This song fucking slaaaaaays. He's totally singing about banging some dead bitch. "I love to fuck the dead/demons in my head/Tearing at my brain." Yeah, man, don't let all this dumb shit fuck you up. 1990 is gonna be a killer fucking year for us, dude.

Duuuude!!!!

Curse You Slobodaaaaaaan!!!

Well I was going to post the great Violent Party compilation today, but Slobodan Burgher of the fantastic Only In It For The Music Blog beat me to it. But I will post it later with my review. I was pretty despondent until I checked my mailbox and saw that the CTR Kuruizaki Thunder Road cd I ordered from Hardcore Holocaust arrived. For those of you who don't know HC Holocaust is a great, non-rip off distro. Support!!! So in celebration of this momentous occasion I have opted to post CTR's mind-alteringly kick ass Kuruizaki Attack ep. CTR fucking kill!!! Imagine what G.I.S.M. might be doing today if they hadn't disbanded and you might get an idea of what CTR is laying down, mainly due to the singer sounding like Sakevi. G.I.S.M. could do anything they fucking wanted to, and CTR seem to have the same license. CTR material provides surprisies at every turn while still being classically Japcore. So highly recommended.

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"Lazy Bones!!"

If you, like me, went all bat-shit looney for that Chrissy Zebby Tembo album I posted a while back, then you will absolutely love Witch, who like Chrissy Zebby Tembo, hailed from Zambia. Witch released just one album, Lazy Bones, in 1975. It is a work of sheer genius. Witch played the same sort of wah-wah psych as Mr. Zebby Tembo but with a bit more darkness. Check out the opening track, "Black Tears." It starts out rather melancholy and builds into a chugging, almost Sabbath-inspired shuffle before finishing with a doomy end. Lazy Bones!! sounds as if it was recorded live to 2-track with the vocals and some acoustic guitar added later. The spartan production only makes the album more heartfelt and endearing. The drum fills and vocals at times overload the mics. You can almost hear the suffocating heat of whatever slap dash Zambian studio they were in, playing their hearts out. Witch had great songs, and a pair of brilliant guitar players in Chris Mbewe and John Muma. Mbewe also is responsible for the casual vocals that further sweeten the whole affair. I really can't do this justice with mere words, it's sad, joyous, reflective, hopeful, playful, mournful, enchanting, winsome, gloomy, it's all these things and more. Just get it already!!

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Faerical Blasting Punk

That's right, Faerical Blasting Punk. That is how French outsider black metal band, Nuit Noire, describe their sound, and why not? It aptly describes their paper-thin and playful sound. Starting out in 1998 as a more straight forward norsecore band, they morphed into one of the strangest entities on the increasingly bizarre French black metal scene. Perhaps the strangest aspect to Nuit Noire are their lyrics about childhood, frolicking, playing, and sex with faeries, Nuit Noire love faeries. Infantile Espieglery was released in 2006. It is such a weird album of sparse, clumsy punky black metal so clearly lacking bass to fill out the sound. Singer/guitarist Tenebras' snotty vocals sound as if they could only come from a disillusioned French adolescent. Every so often he is joined by the rather malaise-stricken female voice of Emilie, his girlfriend and playmate. To further the childish agenda, Infantile Espieglery bears rather interesting art direction. All the text is hand-calligraphed in what appears to be the work of a pre-teen girl who really loves princesses and horses. The cover art is an old school, zine-style cut and paste job; like the music, it seems unfinished and intentionally so. Nuit Noire is not for everyone, but those who understand will immediately be compelled to shed their hardened exterior and run and dance in the forest with them. Are you ready for the night? Are you ready to be a child?

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The Ghetto's Tryin' To Kill Me

Don't you just hate when you're ball-deep in some ho at the mo-mo and some motherfucker comes in and puts a cap in yo ass? The worst part is that awful feeling that you have been set up by a bitch. You thought she was into you, but really she was just into you being shot. Being a true gangsta nigga is a lonely life, it's a life of constant paranoia and suspicion, and no one knows this better than Master P. On his third album The Ghetto's Tryin' To Kill Me, Master P really digs deep to give his audience the straight fucking dope on what it means to live such a life. It's a late-night creep through the mean streets of Richmond, California where life is cheap and some of these ho's jack. Master P plays the role of a sympathetic antihero trying to warn you of the perils of being a straight baller from the Rich. He's like a guide, he's like a ghetto Tenzing Norgay, and you are the lily-white punk-ass Edmund Hillary. On the track "Something Funky For The Street," Master P takes you through the process of making some delicious home-made crack for all the dopefiends (I like to add a little nutmeg around the holidays for a more down-home taste). But even more helpful is the track "Study Being A Gangster", an infomercial for Master P's comprehensive self-help book. He assures you that you will learn how to do a drive-by, how to smuggle drugs from city to city, and most importantly, how turn an ordinary girl into a street ho (not as easy as you might think). One my favorite cuts on the record is the play-by-play account of an armed liquor store robbery called "211". For the job P brings along a female accomplice named Sonya C who sounds absolutely adorable when she spits the lines, "So don't be talkin' fuckin' Japanese/Understand it's a jack/give up the cash/or you'll be Swiss cheese." Sadly, this is all we get of Sonya C. The Ghetto's Tryin' To Kill Me wraps with "No Limit Party," which Master P assures you that there is, in fact, no party like a no limit party (because a no limit party don't quit), and why should it really? As long as there's dank to be smoked, dope to be bubbled up, player haterz achin' to get they wigs split, and trigger-crazy ballers goin' loc on some old school stoney g-funk, then Master P is down.

Here, Bitch!

Speed

Here's a rough and tumble primitive NWOBHM single from Speed, a band that featured a young punter from Sheffield by the name of Bruce Dickinson. I think Bruce only appears on the a-side, the peppy Man In The Street. The b-side, On The Road reminds me of the earliest Manilla Road recordings. Bruce left the band in 1978, I hear he did pretty well for himself in some other band.

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Nigel Pepper Cock

Check out the crusty credentials here. Nigel Pepper Cock was made up of ex-members of Destroy, Dystopia, Fuckface, Skaven, and Medication Time. So logic would tell you that this is some blistering political hardcore with thought-provoking lyrics about animal liberation, veganism, and the rising police state. WRONG! Nigel Pepper Cock were more concerned with needles, whores, cocaine, pot smoking wizards, and O.J. Simpson (about 10 years after the fact). Although the strength of this band was in their clever and chaotic live performances, The New Way is a fucking great record! You might have written this off as another jokey, anti-pc, novelty record if it weren't for the shredding guitar tones, and most importantly, the sleazy keyboards that coat this album in a cummy shimmer. Nigel Pepper Cock celebrated all that is unsavory and taboo, not unlike another East Bay band of old, the mighty Fang. The New Way was released in 2002 on vinyl and cd. I really really miss this band.

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Hot Rock & Thunder

Goliath were yet another underrated hard rock band that released one album in 1972. They hailed from Kentucky. The strength of Goliath was the vocal powerhouse Jim Kitchen whose wide range pushed the whole record up a few notches. Goliath suffered from a bit of an identity crisis, trying their hand at blues-based southern rocking as well as AOR type radio-friendly catchiness. This might have contributed to their obscurity, but it's still hard to believe that the band that penned a song as cool as We're Not Afraid wouldn't have enjoyed some success. At times Goliath gets a bit goofy, but over the course of the seven songs here, there's enough greatness to forgive the occasional chaff.

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Good Music, Bad People: Blazebirth Hall

Blazebirth Hall is the name of a tight-knit group of radical right-wing black metal bands from Russia including Forest, Branikald, Ravendark, Rundagor, Vargleide, and Nitberg, as well as a few fringe members. The Blazebirth Hall is notorious worldwide for its violent ideology, criminal activities, and frequent jail sentences. Founding member Ulv Gegner Irminsson, a member of Forest, was stabbed to death in October of 2005. The details surrounding his murder remain unclear. One needs only to look at the snapshots shown above to get an idea of how truly sketchy these folks are. Despite their extremely ugly and narrow worldview, the Blazebirth Hall bands tend to make some astoundingly beautiful and reflective music, especially Branikald and Forest. In 2005 (shortly before Ulv Gegner's death) the Hammerkrieg compilation cd was released by Hakenkreuz Records. Hammerkrieg is the official statement of the Blazebirth Hall, and it provides an excellent glimpse into a shadowy world of nationalist thugs and elite black metal. Warning: This is only for those who have come to grips with the fact that black metal is not a nice place, and aren't squeamish about dubious political agendas.

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Innocence & Despair

No album has successfully captured the vague sadness of childhood better than The Langley Schools Music Project's Innocence and Despair. Perhaps because it was made by children themselves, perhaps because all these children have now grown up and may well mourn the loss of innocence as adults tend to as they continue their slow crawl towards the grave. The inherent woe and fragility of childhood fills every fumbling nook and cranny of this album. It is painful and bittersweet like the death of summer, or a Judy Blume book. This album will simulteneously warm and break your heart.

Long before Jack Black or School of Rock there was Hans Louis Fenger, a typically broke Vancouver rocker who took a job at Belmont Elementary in rural Langley, British Columbia in 1971. He started teaching the kids pop songs of the time using no theory or sheet music, showing the kids just enough to get through the arrangements. The kids loved it. Four years later Fenger was teaching grades 4-7 at three different schools. Soon after, Fenger organized a giant concert in one of the school's gymnasiums with kids from all over BC to perform for parents and staff alike. The instrumentation was as follows:

• electric bass, featuring a girl plucking on open-tuned string with a Marshall amp bigger than she was.
  
• a stripped-down drum kit; a bass drum on a pedestal; and hand cymbals
  
• a 1940s-vintage National Steel laptop electric; wired through a tremolo
• Orff xylophones and metallophones
• hand percussion, eg., tambourines and claves
• acoustic rhythm guitar and piano (played by Fenger)

Fenger enlisted his friend Glen Finseth to help record the album. He brought his Revox 2-track deck to Glenwood Elementary and strategically placed two mics in the massive gymnasium. This attributes to the ghostly atmosphere of the record, it adds to the bizarre sense of melancholy of the performance. The kids recorded nine songs in one take. Fenger pooled up money from the parents and faculty and pressed a scant 300 LPs to give to those involved.

In 1977 Fenger was teaching at Wix-Brown Elementary in Langley. It was there that a second recording was made of 12 songs. Fenger estimates that 150 kids took part in these sessions, as well as a gymnastic performance set to Space Oddity. In 1979 Fenger returned to Vancouver where he still resides to this day teaching music.

One of the reasons Innocence and Despair works so well is the choice of songs. The delicate nature of Brian Wilson's compositions are best sang by children, and five of his songs represented here. But the clear winner is the haphazard and absolutely devastating version of Space Oddity. The Langley School's rendition of The Eagles ballad Desperado is another choice cut with 8-year-old Sheila Behman delivering the song with more vulnerability and longing than any adult could ever muster. This is precisely why Innocence & Despair is heavy without being loud, beautiful without being well-orchestrated, and absolutely moving without being overly concerned with being so. Innocence & Depair is the sound of the heartbreak of a fleeting childhood, the sound of a thousand scraped knees on the way to the numbing ennui of adulthood.
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Sexual Carnage

Sextrash was started in 1987 by former Sarcofago drummer, D.D. Crazy. Much like Sarcofago, Sextrash played hyperspeed primitive death/thrash with english-as-a-second-language lyrics about Satan, alcohol, and fucking. After releasing a few demos and the XXX ep, the band entered JG Studios in Belo Horizonte, Brazil and recorded their classic Sexual Carnage album. It's a wild dionysian orgy of manic riffing and juvenile sadistic sex fantasies, and it's thoroughly enjoyable. Your girlfriend will hate it.

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An American Punk Band

The Rhythm Pigs came out of the box head and shoulders above their peers. They had to do this while living in Texas of all places and they triumphed. On their debut, the An American Activity ep the band melded two opposing ethos of hardcore in the '80s: the humor and wise acreage of bands like A.O.D. and The Gay Cowboys and the forceful rippitude of bands like Raw Power and C.O.C. An American Activity contains one of the greatest hardcore songs ever, Military Fairy. They were smart, cynical, and snotty, yet still totally ass-kickin' when they wanted to be. I didn't care for anything they did after this but An American Activity alone is enough to ensure the Rhythm Pigs' place in the Hardcore Hall of Fame, should there ever be one. This ep was released in the very punk year of 1984.

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No One Left But Me

This motherfucker is rare, as it was privately pressed by the band themselves in an edition of 500 in 1974. Wedge (formerly Orange Wedge) were Baltimore's premier purveyors of kick ass proto-metallic hard rock. Pretty solid album, but the title track is a standout. I wish I had more to tell you but information on Wedge is as hard to come by as the record itself. If anybody cares to fill in the blanks it'd be much obliged.

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Black Metal Ist Albern

Asenheim is a one-man German band playing some of the weirdest, most amateur, fucked up black metal there is. Headed by a mysterious entity known as Tiwaz, this is just the sort of outsider retard art that makes me wet myself. Bands like this are Cosmic Hearse's raison d'être. This is the reason black metal rules, like the early days of punk, anyone can do it. Any sullen misanthropic teenager with a guitar and simple recording software can be a "band", and while the results may not always be musically competent, they're often brilliant. As is the case with Asenheim. First let's study the cover art, a drawing of a stumpy black metal warrior (presumably Tiwaz) alone in the wilderness, surrounded by Elhaz runes fashioned from sticks and adorned with bloody skulls and bones. Under the full moon's glow, he thrusts his mighty sword into the center of a pentagram drawn in the snow. In theory it sounds cool enough, however the execution seems like that of an adolescent boy. Nonetheless, it is a most fitting cover for Ahnenpfade, Asenheim's first full-length album. Almost all the songs on Ahnenpfade start with a lone clean guitar intro having nothing to do with the all out bedroom black metal assault to ensue. The vocals are mixed very high, the drum machine is small and cheap sounding, and the arrangements are peppered with random out-of-key synths. And this goes on for an hour, 15 songs ending with a cover of Absurd 's Der Sieg Ist Unser. Genius!

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A mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity

The crippling meanspiritedness of San Francisco's bass-driven beast, Burmese is best exemplified in their pummeling third album A mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity. Burmese, while not being at all metal, display more bludgeoning brutality than a hundred doughy death metal bands culling medical textbooks for grossout band names. Inspired by the sheer negatronic fuckery as Whitehouse (they later released a tribute to Whitehouse album) ,the plodding crush of Harvey Milk, and the methlab grinds of early neanderthal power violence, Burmese are like a particularly brutal prison rape of sound. Ugly, violent, and swathed in an oppressive humidity like Burma itself. Fuck Fuck Fuck!

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The Key

The brilliant, and now defunct German fanzine Tales of the Macabre once wrote "You don't know The Key? Back to kindergarden, you poseur!!!" Truer words have never been written.

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Into The Unknown

Despite all of punk's liberal leanings, messages of tolerance, and celebration of going against the grain, it still was a rigid scene of unforgiving, unchanging, stubborn, elitist jerkoffs. The rule was that since punk was anathema to all that was corporate and false, any punk band that stopped playing what was perceived as punk had obviously "sold out." Immediately the band's motives were on trial, and the verdict was always that they did it to make money, but sadly it never really panned out that way. The audiences were ruthless. Remember Discharge's ill-fated tour in support of Grave New World? And who can forget Decry's descent into Sunset Strip coke-metal hell, or Die Kreuzen's flirtation with twee '90s alterno-shit, or the most notorious, SSD's abomination, Break It Up?

In 1983 Bad Religion released their second album Into The Unknown, following so shortly after the debut, How Could Hell Be Any Worse?, a so-so album of Southern California punk. Into The Unknown was very confusing, and upsetting to many people. It's really hard to pinpoint exactly what the band were thinking, who they were influenced by, or what they were going for with this one. Kind of like Arena Rock, new wave, and prog rock, yet so lacking any real lavish production values to suggest this was an attempt at a cash in. I don't buy the "sellout" theory in regards to this record. It seems sincere enough, besides it isn't an obvious appropriation of some already tried and true successful band or sound.

Some have suggested heavy drug use was behind the band's new sound. Granted, Into the Unknown IS weird, it just doesn't strike me as drug weird. The production is horrible, muddy and slathered in totally goofy keyboards. Most of the songs are built around Kansas-styled acoustic guitars. All the while, the distinct voice of Greg Gaffin shines through. Bad Religion wishes Into The Unknown never happened, although they have stated many times that they are not trying to hide it. It's the only album from their catalog that never was reissued. On their retrospective cd collection Bad Religion 80-85, (available here) material from Into The Unknown is completely left out. Rumor has it that 10,000 copies of Into the Unknown were pressed on vinyl and almost all were returned to the label. I've seen it fetch over $1000 on eBay.

Bad Religion are clearly smart guys, they use big words like surrpetitiousness and isomorphic, so why the foolish pride? Why not own up to making a really fucked up album when they were young and on drugs? And most importantly, why not reissue what (in my opinion) is their single greatest recording? Obviously at some point they thought it was good, or they wouldn't have made 10,000 of them, right? We all have things in our past that we may not be proud of, be it an ex, a job, a band, that night where you drank too much bottom shelf tequila at your office Christmas party and shit yourself shortly after making a clumsy pass at a coworker, but eventually you learn to move on and eventually even laugh about it. I guess to Bad Religion, Into The Unknown is like a polaroid from that poopstained, tequila soaked office party, a polaroid that pops up every so often, and here it is on the internet. Just rerelease it already, Epitaph, I'll buy two.

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Blackwater Park

No, not the Opeth record, but rather the amazing German hard rock band of the same name that released Dirtbox, their only album, in 1972. Not as balls out as Night Sun and not at all Krautrock like Amon Duul or Faust. In fact, Blackwater Park played rather American sounding bluesy riff rock with some very hooky songs at that. Make sure you got something to cram in the ol' ceramic wizard-shaped bong for this one.

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Necrite

Necrite are a young Black Metal trio from San Jose, California. I recently saw these guys play here in San Francisco and was very impressed. Here's their new demo, Bereft of Hope. Recorded live in their rehearsal space a couple of weeks ago, it contains one long, very sinister track. The photo comes courtesy of Brandi Valenza, longtime Cosmic Hearse passenger and friend. 

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The Pleasure Principle

"Glowing Red Pyramid," said Gary Numan, "now that I have disbanded Tubeway Army what should I do?"

"Go forth, young Gary Numan," said the Glowing Red Pyramid, "and make the coolest album of all time, but no guitars, too many guitars in the world."

"Okay."

"Oh, and Gary?"

"Yes, Glowing red pyramid?"

"I love you."

"Um, yeah, love you too."

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Iron Fucking Cross!

I'm sure there was a million Heavy Metal bands going under the moniker of Iron Cross in the 1980s, but it is the Orlando, Florida based Iron Cross that we're paying tribute to here. Formed in 1979, it took Iron Cross seven years to get out their self-titled debut. It's a pretty fun record of typical '80s metal with dopey lyrics about, y'know, demons, mistresses of the dark, and even the obligatory shout-out to S&M. Fans of Manilla Road and the like should take heed. I guess they (like every band from the '80s) have reformed.

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