Awesome! Thanks for these. I had that Voivod, Agnostic Front and Exciter album on my to-listen-for -diary list, but not those others! I’ll look em up and add em. _________________ -Ryan
Okay, real talk, I have been listening to this a lot. It’s short and its really really good – I’d even say great – all the way through. But I am tired as fuck after pulling an all nightery last night and I can’t find the words or energy to say anything of interest. I’ll give it a go, but wanted to justify and make excuses for the following crap...
These mofos are boston dudes and they kick ass. The style here is not at all typical fast hardcore. There are some really inventive riffs and killer beats here and the song structures are quite odd at times and they mix in very short almost dub or reggae sounds at a couple points and their guitar tone is heavy and textured and the vocals just bloody work so well in their rabid pissed off state. The songs are each distinct and even toward the end of this 10 minute ep when they lean more toward “traditional” hardcore, there are distinctive features that make it… well… distinct from your straight up and down, loud and fast, very little variety hardcore of the time. It doesn’t sound like these lads were in some insane rush, they can play fast no doubt… but they use that tool sparingly and it makes it more impactful when used. Overall, this is essentially as good a hardcore release as it gets. Fucking fabulous and as of now my fave boston hardcore ep/lp. (although its been years since I have really listened to most of the stuff coming out of boston in early to mid 80s… so maybe jerry’s kids the F.U.’s or someone will steal the Boston HC crown back again soon.
Okay, so this is heavy. Very dark and pessimistic as well. And it’s just a very heavy, dark, downer of an album. It writhes with loathing for everyone and everything. This shit just sounds demented. All these things are obvious and pretty well known about this album and this band’s early work. But listening to it in context of some other “heavy” music of the time, I did get a new appreciation of just how fucking heavy as hell this is. It’s practically Godflesh-levels of industrial brutal heaviness but 5 years before their debut EP! It’s nuts.
And the lyrics! And the vocals! Jimminy cricket this shit is just mean and low-down! Don’t have much else to say about that.
The first track is pretty much what you can expect for the whole album. “Stay Here” is a nasty punch in the mouth. The lyrics make me smile because I always like to imagine a Gym/Fitness company using the song for some ad spot. It would work! But it would also be too intense for about 80-90% of people.
I like the repetitive, untraditional percussive sounds here. The guitars (bass included) also have a nice crunchy sound to them. The way the noises and grating industrial elements are mixed in is awesome and probably my favorite aspect of this sound. There are some part sof this album that are intensely immersive and when I’m in the right mood it feels nice getting lost in this dank, relentless world.
But, full disclosure, I don’t really love this album, nor is it something that I think I will come back to often. It’s a landmark album and it’s influence on both metal and punk without being either is incredibly cool and commendable. This is also a major moment for Noise Rock, experimental, and all kinds of more inaccessible and “boundary-pushing” music. But it also tends to be so utterly without sentiment, so utterly devoid of light, so wildly cold, that I tend not to vibe with it… and I am not some cheery guy.
With some of those comments in my last paragraph, I feel like I was painting with a broad brush. I enjoyed listening to this a couple times. I respect it and some tracks, namely the opener and “Weakling” and especially “Power For Power” kind of blew me away. This is a seminal album. An important artistic statement. I suppose I admire and respect this album more than I love it.
I hear that Cop, Greed and some other early Swans records are very similarly harsh, repetitive, brutal and heavy and without light. I may or may not listen to them when they come up chronologically. This does give me more context as to what was so wild about the change Swans did to their sound in 1987 with Children of God. Fascinating artistic development in just a couple years.
As of now, that is all I have to say about this beast of a record.
I saw that Swans had an EP they released a year earlier than their debut and I just had to explore it. I was caught off guard! This is No Wave/Post Punk/angular and …funky? Yeah! The first track sounds like No Wave’s answer to Talking Heads. The closing track, Sensitive Skin (my favorite track here and maybe my new fave Swans track off the top of my head) has a cold, cavernous Joy Division vibe at times. The second track has a slight Dancy/Gang of Four feel. Of course, take all those classics I am comparing it to, and increase the creepiness and menace by a couple orders of magnitude. Still… I really really like this!
Looking at comments and reviews on it, I was surprised how often people were saying it was “just your standard No Wave” or some such stuff. I will admit that I am not nearly as familiar with the genre and scene of No Wave as I’d like to be. So, what may sound fresh and at times exhilaratingly new to me could very well be derivative. But there is an energy and adventurousness all over these 4 tracks that I found quite refreshing! I love the angularity of those guitar riffs, the subtle spice of the horns coming in and swooping in to kick the soundscape into a higher level, the way the bass lines get funky and danceable (apparently Gira played some or all the bass here which is cool). I love the weird rhythmic switch ups. It is wild how THOROUGHLY Swans paired down and focused their sound after they released this really quite busy EP. There are No Wave and somewhat busy moments here and there on Filth. But not nearly to this degree.
The vocals here are so much less brutal and pissed off and in your face than what we are served on Swans debut. It’s kinda wild the vocal difference, really. It’s about as drastic a change (in the same amount of time) as Hetfield’s vocals from No Life ‘Til Leather to Kill ‘Em All.
As I mentioned before, the highlight track is the closer “Sensitive Skin”. This song has to be heard. It’s got such a beautiful, eerie sound and the way it builds is incredible. The remaster I assume is what makes this thing sound so modern, but yeah this sounds like it could have been released in the last couple years – very rich and meaty sounding track. The production/remaster work is gorgeous throughout the whole EP.
Anyway, gotta say, I liked this A LOT. Less intimidating than the debut LP released a year later. Also, Filth is for sure a much more Landmark release and more of it’s own individual artistic achievement. But in terms of enjoyment while listening, Swans (EP) gets my vote between the 2 releases.
This is an album I would consider a masterpiece. On a somewhat simplistic level of analysis, there are no duds here, no filler. More detailed reasons I love this album: The bass lines are not just cool or beautiful – they are absolutely brilliant throughout. The occasional noisy guitar outbursts are sick, the riffs are cold, methodical, harsh. The vocals are the stuff of legend. The atmosphere, the lyrics, even the (as usual) incredible album artwork all forward a vibe and space where this music exists in shadowy, mildly terrifying, foggy darkness.
The more I listen to this album the more I appreciate it. Rudimentary Peni was one of the best bands of the 1980s. The way they blend the harshness and brashness of anarcho-punk with the cold, desolate soundscapes of post-punk, with the energy and rage of Hardcore at times is something to behold! The whole band shines here. The guitar work of Nick Blinko is not showy, but cold and primal and savage and unrelenting, like a mad man with a knife who keeps on coming on no matter what you throw at him. The drumming of Jon Greville is minimalistic most of the time, then on occasion – at just the right times to add the needed spice to tracks – he does some cool fill or flourish. And of course the 2 Stars of this Show are the bassist (and occasional vocalist) Grant Matthews, as well as the feverish, lost, unsettled seething madness of Blinko on vocals. The bass and the vocals work so perfectly in tandem. The darkly melodic basslines sound like the shadow following Blinko around wherever he goes. The bass lines are the feature that creates the paranoid, sinister uneasiness that this album lives in. And of course, Blinko’s vocals… oh Nick… you were the best singer around. There is a gravelly, wide-eyed raving lunacy in the sound of his barking tirades that is wholly unique and special. Whether talking about his mental state, government corruption, despicable humans and their hypocrisy or strange visions straight out of his sub-conscious, I can’t help but hang on every word.
The individual track highlights for me are “Radio Schizo”, “Rotten To The Core” (a brilliant diss of Strummer and Lydon within), “Pig In A Blanket”, “Army of Jesus”, “Slimy Member” and “Alice Crucifies the Paedophiles”. But really this is an album, again, with no bad tracks, occasional variety, a distinct atmosphere and flow track-to-track and side-to-side, and while those tracks would sound cool in isolation, they work as a dark, nasty LP listening experience all the more.
Rudimentary Peni were masters and only in the last few months with this diary project have I come to realize how much I truly adore this band. Their 2 EPs from before this debut album were each unique and brilliant (especially Farce EP which is another masterpiece). And their last album of the 80s, 1988’s CACOPHONY is also a classic and the most scatter-brained and wild of all their releases. Just a towering run of releases from these blokes that I hope all of you check out asap.
The very messy beginnings to this very, very influential band are documented here with their first LP. This is not particularly fast most of the time and isn’t really “Thrashy”. It’s recorded poorly and played sloppily. There exists gobs and gobs of attitude and inspiration here. It sounds like Tom and the crew were going about finding their sound and getting out their heavy metal ideas in a very off-the-cuff and DIY way. I respect that. This sounds like some solid Venom worshipping, sinister shit at times and I wouldn’t say it was unpleasant or repulsive. But… it was missing anything I truly loved. I know that looking at the whole sweep of Hellhammer releases until 1984 when they started over as Celtic Frost, you can see – or, rather, hear – the gradual artistic breakthroughs and development. It’s fascinating. I have heard this, their first of 1983, and I have heard their more classic 1983 demo/album (the 3rd one they released) Satanic Rites, and in those few months you can clearly hear the development of their skill and sound and the flourishing of their visionary metal ways. This development culminates of course in the towering awesomeness of Celtic Frost’s first 2 albums.
Anyway… where am I going with that? I got distracted…. Oh yeah, this album is okay. Nothing super exciting here. The coolest thing is hearing the inception of some metal ideas and styles. More Hellhammer to come in 1983. I’m curious to see how their sound develops with new ears.
Edit after coming back to this: As I tend to do, I went around and around mentally on this, feeling like I gave this short shrift. I listened again this AM. My appreciation increased. This is really a very cool mix of punk and metal, nothing super special yet, but it’s sound is at times quite brutal. I run into the “Black Metal” question again. It seems black metal in this first phase is basically punky thrash played more sloppily and recorded more primitively than heavy metal/thrash generally was at the times, mixed with satanic and dark lyrics. I don’t hear (yet) what I would actually label Black Metal on this. I think I will have to wait for Bathory’s second album for more of what I would personally label Black Metal. But! This is a demo that plays right into my tastes… crust punk, punk, Venom, primitive metal, somewhat thrashy stuff, DIY, dark, etc all = MY TASTES. It doesn’t yet coalesce into something truly great on this thing YET. But the seeds are planted here.
6/10
--- --- ---- --- ---
Okay, and that is all for this one! I have reached that massive list of albums simply listed “RELEASED 1983”. That is more than half the albums on my list, really. So I will have more free-reign to put these albums in whatever order I want! That’s a nice feeling.
EDIT: I was mistaken! Somehow somewhere along the line I started adding albums into my list that are broadly and Unspecifically listed as released 1983 but I cut the line and nestled in that list of simply 1983, are a COUPLE (just 2) absolutely CLASSIC heavy metal records released in MAY OF 1983. Just so their is no suspense; they are PIECE OF MIND and HOLY DIVER!
I really love where this project is taking me. Some cool stuff released in this period and in 1983 shit got wild!
Let me know your thoughts on these records below, if ya wanna. Otherwise, have a great day and week and month, everyone. _________________ -Ryan
SSD! SSD! Boston in da house!!! Great stuff and cool takes, Merc! \m/
Glad you decided to include Swans in this beast of a project. They belong!
Hell yeah! What a great EP, band and punk scene those are!
And yeah once I decided to expand this basically into extreme or harsh rock of any kind, I needed to include Swans. Giants, they are!
I have always had a fascination with harsh, so-called “Death Industrial” as well and there will be some of that peeking into this project soon also. I am quickly making this project unwieldy in what it includes! _________________ -Ryan
Oh, we're still on 1983? I should've recc'd more stuff from that year, lol. But yeah Swans are as influential as they are good.
Yeah agreed on Swans. Click coming around on them slowly.
And yeah there are probably about 40-50 projects queued up for 1983 - mostly metal and hardcore punk, but some other stuff that felt right that falls outside those rigid lines.
I added for example the Normil Hawaiians 1983 album as well after you brought them to my attention yesterday. _________________ -Ryan
That’s a solid suggestion. For some reason when I was covering 80-82 I never highlighted killing joke. They are a band I am familiar with and I know their influence is significant. I really like some of their later more metallic albums. _________________ -Ryan
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Mercury
mickilennial
Repo
