Les Legions Noire Part Eight: Torgeist

Torgeist, along with Vlad Tepes and Belketre, were one of the better known LLN bands, perhaps because Torgeist played a more traditional style of Black Metal. Again, Torgeist had the prolific Vordb (Black Murder, Brenoritvrezorkre, Dzlvarv, Moëvöt, Susvourtre, Vzaeurvbtre, Dvnaèbkre, and Belketre) in their ranks. Here is their classic Time of Sabbath demo from 1995, the unholy year of LLN.

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The Day The Laughter Died

Isn't show business fucked? One day you're America's favorite racist douchebag, and the next day you are just a racist douchbag. Folks, brace yourself for one of the most uncomfortable 45 minutes ever recorded. Not funny ha ha, not funny strange, just weird, tense, and a bit sad. The death of Andrew Dice Clay caught live on tape. Icky. Thanks to J. Harlow for part two. And thanks to Chaki for part one.

Part 1

Part 2

Mystique

Here's a totally rare, privately pressed, Heavy Metal EP from Canada's Mystique. I know what you're thinking, "So what, it's rare, is it good?" Dude, it's beyond good, it's gooder. Mystique is a bit like the eccentric NWOBHM band Hell. Poorly recorded, but rich in spirit. Delicious archaic keyboards, some tasty guitars, and some awesome fantasy lyrics. It'd be a shame to miss this one.

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Part Animal Part Machine

1986 and Black Flag was on shaky ground. Infighting, relentless touring and swollen egos threatened to rip apart one of the greatest bands of all time. Sensing the end, Henry Rollins assembled a kick-ass band and headed for the studio to record this pink thing called Hot Animal Machine. Part scorcher, part novelty record, Hot Animal Machine is a bit of a polarizing album. The album kicks off with three solid songs: "Followed Around," "Black and White" and "Lost and Found." Then we get "There's a Man Outside" rocking, yet lyrically and musically a bit monotonous. Next is a cover of Richard Berry's "Crazy Lover" which reminds us that Rollins, as well as being angry, has a sense of humor and a bit of a David Lee Roth type showman buried within his anguished persona. "A Man and A Woman" is an angular, discordant piece of skronky jazz which serves as a bed for a Rollins spoken word piece about domestic violence. The title track barrels in and pulls the album back to the intent of the first three cuts. Then two more cover songs, "Ghost Rider" by Suicide and "Move Right In" by The Velvet Underground. The whole thing falls apart rather brutally with "No One," a disjointed dirge that has Henry losing it. It's almost there to, once and for all, let you know that Henry has snapped despite all the fun you may have had with this record. Hard to believe he has a talk show now. Fantastic artwork by Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO.

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On The Wings Of Death

Socrates Drank The Conium were a very talented progressive hard rock group from Greece with a clumsy name. On The Wings was the band's third, and best album. Socrates had some biting guitar tones, and cool songs, but the star here is drummer Yorgos Tradalidis. The guy is a wealth of finessed breaks to die for (DJs,turntablists, and breakbeaters take note). Weird off-kilter rhythms and rhythms collide with gut-punching rock riffs to form a solid album. On The Wings is highly recommended.

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Dark Endless

Marduk's first album, Dark Endless, was released way back in 1992 when Swedish Black Metal still had some things in common with Death Metal. I could write a thing or two on what I think is wrong with Marduk, but this album would be exempt from my ramble. Dark Endless is just too fresh-faced and eager. I can find no fault in young Marduk. Dark Endless is more of a thinner sounding Swedish Death Metal album than it is a Black Metal one, it even reminds me of the forceful bludgeon of Asphyx at times. Whatever they do now barely interests me, but Marduk's first album is way cool.

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Thrones And Dominions

Earth's third album called Phase 3:Thrones and Dominions from 1995. Gone is Dave Harwell. This incarnation was mainly the work of Dylan Carlson. Perhaps Earth's most overlooked release, it is also one of the most unsettling. Bad trips.

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SCUM

Napalm Death's debut, Scum, is by no means rare, and I'm sure a million other blogs have already shared it, but this album is a personal favorite and you can't deny its importance. I just wanted it to be part of the Cosmic Hearse pantheon. This came out in 1987, but I didn't discover it until around 1990. Scum was like a nail bomb to my young mind. I'd never heard anything so fast and so ugly, but what I also noticed was the lyrics, which seem to come directly from the Discharge school of anarcho-haiku. Pure poetry recited over 250 BPMs. Scum still freaks me out almost two decades later, and multi-national corporations are still fucking dicks.

Scum

Gasmask vs. Coward

This cool little MCR Company split CD collects the recorded works of two very feral and raucous Japanese hardcore bands from the '80s, Gasmask and Coward. Both bands hailed from Osaka, and originally released EPs on the Skeleton label. The Gasmask portion of this CD contains their amazing 7" EP, two live songs, an unreleased track and two collaborations with Coward called Cowmask. On the Coward portion you get their 7" EP (sometimes called Voice), which was posted here way back when the Hearse first rolled out of the garage. You also get two tracks from the Ninngenn Omnibus compilation, some live stuff, and three collaborations with Gasmask called Gasward. Both bands are absolutely crazy great but if I have to declare a victor, I'm giving it to Coward for having a cooler skull on their artwork.

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Black Forest Dark Forest

Gjennom Morke Skogen. There's something very magical about this tape of seemingly improvised, instrumental Black Metal from Norwegian band, Istorn. Istorn is led by Udeth who is also the weird brain behind Unbeing.

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Jud Jud

All I'm saying is if you've heard it, you love it, if you haven't you should.

Jud

Nothing You Will Hear On This Album Is Remotely As Cool As The Cover

Get a load of that cover!!! Some kind of B.C. Rich-wielding barbarian emerging from a fireplace while Emperor Palpatine looks on. Oh, and did I mention the warrior women in thongs who have arrived to either hump that guy or kill him, or both? So how amazing should an album be to deserve such an image? Does the music inside live up to the promise of the cover? No. No it doesn't, unless you get all gushy over bargain basement later Judas Priest worship with dashes of Sunset Strip coke metal to get the party started. And it's a fucking party alright. However, it's the kind of party you go to in Missouri in 1985, not Hollywood. Relax, drink some Budweiser from a warm keg, flirt with a fat chick. Make the best of a bad situation and maybe it'll actually be fun. Besides, Fortress kicks off the party with the big rave up intro of "Metal Meltdown." The song is almost like a metal Mad-Lib with lyrics about liking it loud and fast and warnings to those who might try to impede your path to metal. Ever notice how the ballad (if there is to be one) is often the third track? Well, I have, and Fortress predictably offers up "Into The Night" which starts off with the trite lyric "Just 16..." blah blah, obligatory story of a runaway living fast on the streets. In fact all the lyrics on this album are so generic it's almost unbelievable. The riffs too for that matter.You've heard this album before, even if you haven't. Okay, I'm ready to admit this party sucks.

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Godflesh

No, not Godflesh the band, but rather the first 7" EP from one of Cosmic Hearse's all time favorite bands, Load. I've already said all there is to say about these guys on the other posts about them so without further ado, here it is.

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Hard Stuff

After leaving Atomic Rooster in 1971, John Cann formed Hard Stuff. In almost no time at all, the band was signed to Deep Purple's vanity label, Purple Records. The result was Bulletproof, a total ass-kicker of a hard rock album that, although it didn't receive much attention, is an energetic slab of dirthead riffery with swagger and style in spades. I'm pretty sure you'll go ape shit over this one. Oh, and check out the guy on the top left of the cover...How fucking high is that dude? Nice work, bro.

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Nuisance

Malveillance's third release was the Nuisance tape, it was released in 2004 by Blasphemous Underground Productions. Limited to a scant 222 copies. You all didn't really respond much too my last Malveillance post, but fuck it, I'm going to beat you over the head with this stuff until you get on board. I love this band.

Haine

These Songs Will Always Break My Heart

On this day just six years ago Matty Luv left the earth forever. He was my best friend, my partner in crime, the Huey to my Bobby, the Hall to my Oates. I played music with Matty for a period of almost twenty years, and I can honestly say, without bias, that he was one of the great songwriters of our time. As great as Dylan, D. Boon, Darby Crash or that guy that stabbed himself, can't recall his name. Matty's amazing gift for lyrics and sweet pop hooks was uncanny, perhaps the byproduct of his very restless and tortured inner psyche, perhaps not. In honor of his memory I have decided to share the Yogurt tapes. These are extremely special, when he was alive Matty only gave these to those he deemed worthy of listening to them. I guess that's a little elitist and fucked up, because these songs are so fucking great, it'd be a shame to die without ever hearing them. And people do die, believe me, motherfucker, they really do. I guess a little history of Yogurt is due. Yogurt wasn't really a band. It was the name given to Matty's home 4 track recordings which started around 1993 and continued until his death in 2002. There are countless hours of weird lo-fi little songs, skits, sound collages, trippy layers of loops floating around on oddly labeled cassette tapes, but these songs were the ones that made it on to the home-dubbed editions Matty gave away. Matty always labored to make the package of the tape he was giving away very personal, painting the box and hand writing the song titles (which often changed.) Yogurt features alot of guest performances by whoever would drop by our 24th street flat at the time. Wherever you hear live drums that's me, and Matty had me sing here and there (that's me on "Small Town Boy".) After Hickey broke up in 1997, we formed a live line-up for Yogurt with him singing and playing guitar, me singing and playing drums, and Chubby (Hickey's original bassist) on second guitar. We translated some of our favorite songs from the tapes into live rocking numbers and played them, high as fuck. It was kind of a shambles, the live Yogurt thing though, we were all at our worst in the chemical way, and I felt the more we played live like this, the more we tarnished our already spotty legacy. We did manage to eke out a pretty good 15 minute studio recording with this incarnation, and if anyone is interested I can post that too some time. Anyhoo, I quit, and Yogurt was relegated back to the chord/wire/tape miasma of Matty's closet. Matty made recordings under the banner of Yogurt until his death on October 5th 2002. October 5th, this day will always break my heart.

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Strictly Business

I'm by no means an expert on the hip hop, but I do believe that EPMD's first album Strictly Business is one of the greatest rap albums of all time, and it's probably because they sound incredibly high and Eric Sermon sounds like he has a mouth full of candy. Oh, and the line "I'm as deadly as AIDS when it's time to rock the party" doesn't hurt. Have you ever managed to get the words "AIDS" and "Party" into the same sentence? Didn't think so. Two guys, with about a hundred similes to tell you how awesome they are at what they do. Lazy and stoned, in 1988 this is about as cool as it got.

Chill

Gutted

You may have missed this one back in '94 if you were looking to Tampa and Stockholm to sate your cravings for blood-spattered, boneheaded Death Metal. Gutted was made up of the Ditch brothers from from Toledo, Ohio and their debut Bleed For Us To Live is a grotesque platter of grooved out hooks, sickly vocals, and bad fucking vibes. Listening to this today reminds me of when American Death Metal was played by pimply, downy-moustached stoners from bullshit towns and not by guys who look like they work at Urban Outfitters and listen to Job For A Cowboy.

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Toe Jam

Simon Gould read my post on the Metal Moo Cow comp and answered my plea to hear more material by some of the bands, especially Toe Jam. He so kindly ripped this to one long mp3 and scanned the cover so we could all check this out. Now this isn't as moving as their track on the aforementioned comp, which I described as GISM being fronted by Colin of GBH, but this tape is still quite a worthwhile piece of obscure Texan punk damage. Once again, the readers of this blog come through for us all. That warms my heart. Thanks, Simon, you are rule!!!

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Genesis of a Satanic Race

This album has one my favorite covers of all time, an angel and a nazi in gas masks stabbing Jesus on the Cross with the Spear of Longinus. The idiotic, haphazard genius of this drawing compliments the idiotic haphazard genius of Lust, one war-crazed Canadian going by the extreme moniker of Sabazios Diabolus. Lust is frantic and unrelenting. Sometimes the tempos seem to get out of control and the whole song will crash into incoherence only to return to some sort of recognizable riffing. The vocals are hellish, tortured howls. Together the vocals and music make for a gloriously chaotic stew of hideous war metal insanity. Not to mention the strange between song interludes. So weird, so far beyond any sort of reason, Genesis Of A Satanic Race is a treasure of bizarre outsider metal that needs to be experienced. I imagine this what Blasphemy might have sounded like if they had ingested a goat's skull full of PCP before recording Fallen Angel Of Doom. Mandatory!

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