Altered Beast
(Blak Skul - BSR005) 7-inch $9.75 (Out-of-stock)
Kansas City’s Altered Beast delivers riffs with the precision and rhythm of a death metal band — equal parts metal and hardcore without being metallic hardcore — punctuated with heavy youth crew breakdowns. Their blue-collar truth-dealer spits tales of city life with venom-tinged PMA. The result is tough-guy hardcore if your idea of a tough guy is a working class everyman, crushed by the slings and arrows of our post-industrial reality, but refusing to give up in his pursuit of some elusive transcendence. Besides a self-titled demo tape, this seven inch is the product of three years of gigging with countless unrecognized bands worthy of our respect, as well as opening for the likes of Napalm Death, Exodus, Madball, Phobia, Voivod, Prong, Noisem, Iron Reagan, etc. Edition of 440
A Slab Of Liquid Cunt
(Blak Skul) LP $13.50 (Out-of-stock)
Good Time Aussie Bogalars originate from the old gold-rush-town-cum-industrialized-backwater of Ballarat, Victoria, on the continent of Orstralia. Born into a metal scene that had once been promising but was subsequently decimated by heroin, they abandoned the bleak musical environs of Ballarat for the state capital of Melbourne to purvey their brutal blend of hardcore, noise and angular sludge. Not totally sounding like Rupture, the Stretchheads, Anal Cunt playing like Big Flame, a post-rock Eyehategod, or King Snake Roost doing hardcore, it’s otherwise hard to compare them or find touchstones for the sound on this their debut LP. Songs about bad attitudes, bad behavior, bad smells, bad people, all rife with bad language in a working-class Australian slang an outsider will have to Google to understand, these no-neck proles paint vivid pictures of 21st century white trash in Oz, like Brueghel down-under, smearing blood up-and-down the fret boards of pawn-shop six-strings.
Superman Dam Fool
(Blak Skul - BSR003) LP $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
From 2012 through 2014, The Manateees (with an extra “e” to avoid confusion with some forgettable English DJ group) released single after single on Pelican Pow Wow, Goner, Tic Tac Totally, Jackshack, Ken Rock, and Total Punk. Not a one couldn’t wipe the floor with you; nothing personal, you’re just weak and can’t keep up with inspired raw lunacy. Accept it and move on. The repertoire vocalist-guitarist and Memphis lifer Abe White had built-up over the years — in The Oscars, The Guacos, Everyday Faces, Lover!, and True Sons of Thunder — was recorded with Keith on bass and Charms on drums (same Charms of NOTS fame). Blak Skul’s compilation collects almost all these Memphis-as-fuck singles, and substitutes an alternate version here and there. Edition of 550.
Phantom Head
(Blak Skul - BSR-004) LP $14.50 (Out-of-stock)
Sick psych-punk by “weirdo jammers fixated on death feels,” suitable for both the black turtleneck and the Hawaiian shirt sets. A churning, hypnotic, numb, dense, distorted two-guitar attack, with male and female vocals. With Ex-Burial Teens members, as well as The Wet Ones, American Hate, and Chasm. Edition of 550.
Forest Of Blitzkrieg
(Blak Skul) 7-inch (one-sided) $8.50 (Out-of-stock)
No glacier ever made it as far south as Memphis and the temperature is far from Nordic, but Memphis has plenty of death and dungeons, and the crackheads are grim if not frostbitten. Wintercoffin recorded “Forest of Blitzkrieg” at The Armory, as close to a squalid medieval torture pit as you could find in North America (and known to host metal and punk shows, late-night screenings of The History Channel’s Nazi Super Weapons, home recordings, SWAT raids, and a tall male ghost dressed in black with a white face). It also happens to be the base of operations of thrash band Evil Army and located around the corner from the former residence of Jimmy Blitzkrieg, who was later known as Jay Reatard. While Evil Army was primarily an outlet for Bay Area-influenced thrash aggression, Rob Evil and Blitzkrieg spawned Wintercoffin out of a love for ’90s black metal, choosing a classic Darkthrone-meets-Burzum-at-the-Battle-of-Ardennes sound. The mid-to-late-’90s blackened thrash of Dødheimsgard and Aura Noir also deserves mentioning. This is their sole finished recording. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/IbXi2UAt574