downfromtheglen

The Black’s Abbatia Scl. Clementis

downfromtheglen — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 16:04:11 +0000

It’s easy to compare Italy’s The Black to Paul Chain. And the similarities are definitely there—heavy doom with prog influences that only the Italians know how to do. Formed in 1988 by Mario “The Black” Di Donato, and a little less prolific—and perhaps more consistent—than Paul Chain, they play some of the heaviest, eeriest, doom I’ve ever heard, replete with spooky Latin song lyrics and tenebricose church organs. Their sound can be quirky and unconventional in the same vein as, say, Argento’s Profondo Rosso. And in the same way that Argento’s movies use style, emotion and passion to scare the shit out of me, The Black uses mysticism and artistry to do the same.

Posted here is their third release, Abbatia Scl. Clementis (1993, Black Widow Records). If you’re into doom, you won’t be disappointed.

06 Abbatia Scl Clementis

07 Testamentis

08 Oremus

Germs Eat TCDD

downfromtheglen — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 17:54:33 +0000

Germs Eat TCDD // Chemcore

In early 1990 I was finishing up my senior year at the University of Rhode Island. One afternoon I was hanging out in the smoking lounge in Independence Hall, when Professor Otto Doernberger, our resident German scholar, approached me to ask if I would be willing to show a group of East German undergraduate students around campus. The students were sent by the East German government to tour several American college campuses—URI and Brown included. “Show zem ze kahm-poos, und maybee take zem för a kupp of koffee.” I agreed, ambassador-in-training that I was, and showed up the next day at Doernberger’s office to meet them: Reiner, the soft-spoken, pensive and reticent one; Mathhias the über-goofball; and Gunnar, the gregarious spokesman of the group. It turns out that all three were from the city of Rostock, in northern (in what was then) East Germany. I was intrigued by them—as far as I was concerned they were from another world. Over the next few weeks we developed a solid friendship, and, no, we didn’t have heated discussions about politics, economics, and blah, blah, blah. We hung out in bars, got shitfaced on numerous occasions, and went to a Henry Rollins show at the Living Room in Providence. I even took them on a road trip to North Carolina to visit my eternally patient friend Dave Zen. Imagine his surprise when I show up at his place at 7:00 AM with three East Germans in tow. Thanks, Dave.

They soon continued on their journey, leaving me with some interesting and funny memories–like getting stopped by a Virginia state trooper at 2:00 in the morning for speeding. Gunnar was driving (he was the only one among them with a license, issued by the East German military) when we were stopped for doing 75 in a 65 MPH zone. When I saw the red and blue flashing in the mirror, I told Gunnar to pull over. “Vott duz ziss mean, ‘pool ofer’?”, as he continues to drive at 75 MPH with a state trooper behind us. When we finally stopped Gunnar hands his East German license over to the trooper, who has absolutely no idea WTF to make of it. And he did NOT want to hear any translating or commentary from me. Meanwhile the 3 East Germans had simultaneously shat themselves, fearing deportation and hours of interrogation by the Stasi. The trooper soon let us go, with a warning, sternly telling us to get the fuck out of Virginia.

Over the years I got the occasional letter from Gunnar. In 1995 while living in Brooklyn, I received a package containing two cassette tapes from him—one of a “new great band” (Rammstein), and another by Germs Eat TCDD, a hardcore band with Gunnar on drums. I couldn’t listen to the Rammstein tape without the image of a goose-stepping Trent Reznor coming to mind, but I really got into the Germs tape. The vocalist reminds me a little bit of Michael Bothe of Suckspeed (a band that continues to fascinate me). Their sound is very mid-90s German hardcore/metal sounding, but it’s enjoyable. The tape hasn’t aged all that well—you’ll probably notice a little bit of wOw, but it’s listenable. Enjoy.

Germs Eat TCDD were:

Stephen Aldinger (vocals)

Holger Finze (guitar)

Clemens Kurch (guitar)

Mirko Förster (bass)

Gunnar Böhme (drums)

Glow’s Living on Borrowed Time demo

downfromtheglen — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:44:58 +0000

When I started this blog I had a few bands in mind that I wanted to get to first. Spain’s Glow was one of them. Don’t get them confused with the German alterna-fools of the same name—the two are about as similar as paella and bratwurst. The Spanish Glow seems to exist under the radar, and it appears that they’ve split up. (Their myspace page hasn’t been updated in two years, and their official site looks like it’s about 4 years out of date.) Ralph and Juan Luis (vocals and guitar) are now in a band called Mystic Frequency Worm.

What strikes me about Glow is their combination of artistry and intensity—a combination that I so rarely see. Bands like Black Flag, Erosion, Blood Farmers, and Ogre come to mind as bands that pull it off. Not that these bands sound anything like each other, but they’ve all pushed the limits of heavy music, and have created their own sound in the process. Glow fits in there as well—they’re undoubtedly very heavy, and although Ralph’s vocals sound a bit like Mark Zammeron and Chris Cornell, Glow produces a sound that’s as much a nod to classic 70’s doom, as it is an uplifting exploration through jam band territory. These guys were good at what they did. It’s a damn shame that they seem to be gone. But they’ll never be forgotten.

Presented here is their out-of-print demo CD, entitled Living on Borrowed Time—8 tracks of raw intensity. They definitely show some growing pains, but these are swiftly dealt with on their next two full-length releases: Gone, but Never Forgotten (2004), and Dive into the Sun (2006). Check ‘em out.

01 Intro (Nothing Matters)

02 Essential

03 Hungry City

04 Insane

05 Feel You

06 Broken Man

07 The Brick, The Wall And The Snake

08 Call It What You Want

What’s a Totimoshi?

downfromtheglen — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:00:23 +0000

What the fuck's a Totimoshi?

I remember reading about these guys on Crucial Blast’s web site a few years ago. They were described as gritty and raw, and in touch with their own Latino heritage. I was intrigued by this description, and by their name, which, apparently, is a word coined by guitarist and founding member Antonio Aguillar’s mother to describe his Mexican grandmother’s attempts at speaking English. So I plunked down $1.83 to buy a used copy of ¿Mysterioso? from Amazon. They’re definitely gritty, and they get compared to the Melvins and Helmet often enough. I’m not sure I agree with that comparison, because I’ve never been too impressed by Helmet, and because saying that they sound like the Melvins is just too easy, in the same way that it’s too easy to say that any band that plays just a hint of doom sounds like Black Sabbath. But I can’t come up with anything better, so fuck it, they sound like the Melvins.

¿Mysterioso? is a work of art. Metered, crunching, and heavy, with occasional nods to Scratch Acid and Mastodon. They’re not stoner and they’re not doom; they’re alternative, but an alternative to what I don’t know. All I know is that they’re heavy, and that they have a kick-assedly unique sound.

Their demo is uneven, as demos tend to be, and only scratches the surface of what these guys are capable of. Check out their early work—Totimoshi (1999), ¿Mysterioso? (2001), and Monoli (2003). They’re definitely worth a listen for their harder edge. They start to lighten up a little bit with Ladrón (2006) and Milagrosa (2008), but both have grown on me over time.

Their stuff is quickly going out of print, so buy it while you still can. I found their demo tape on eBay for a couple of bucks, and I scored their self-titled first release (1999) from Amazon. Crucial Blast lists Ladrón as out-of-print.

So here it is, their 1998 demo tape.

01 Island

02 Anatomy of a Stick

03 Never Real

04 Estas Huarachas

05 Mending

Sirhan Sirhan

downfromtheglen — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:46:32 +0000

Sirhan Sirhan's demo tape

Time to exorcise some demons. 1984, Brother Murphy’s 10^th grade biology class. I do something stupid, and Eric Fontana—the quintessential class clown—gets blamed and takes a slap in the back of the head for me. Murphy just assumed it was Fontana being Fontana, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to correct him. Thanks, Eric, I owe you one.

Besides being the class clown, Fontana was the quintessential musician as well. He always had a Stratocaster slung over his shoulder, and he played wherever and whenever he could. He was destined to become a performer, so it was no surprise to anyone that he went off to Berklee. I met up with him again in early 1991, only now he was playing a Gibson ES-175 hollowbody. He found his way back to Rhode Island, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, he joined Sirhan Sirhan, the genetically mutated brainchild of Jay Capaldi (Bloke Splatter) and Pete O’Rourke (Danny Vermin). Jay and Pete assembled a quartet of misfits (yeah, had to get that in somewhere), made-up to look like corpses, vermin, psychotic murderers, and, uh, tools. Their mission was to raise the undead, make music, and get people to hate them. They recorded an eight song, 16-minute long, ‘demo’ (not sure we can even call it that), and went on tour (well, they played six gigs—at the Full Moon Saloon in Warwick, at The Channel and Green Street in Boston, and at AS220 in Providence). I was at the AS220 show in January 1991. Musically and visually—from the over-the-top feedback from Fontana’s hollowbody, to their cover of the Sex Pistols’ Belson, and all of the coffins, fake blood, and sound effects in between—the show was a blast. They played a short set, then settled back into the crypt for eternity.

Fontana has since stopped pissing the Whistler off, and has become a celebrity in the Rhode Island rock club scene. Check him out at his myspace page.

Sirhan Sirhan were:

The Whip (Eric Fontana) on guitar

Bloke Splatter (Jay Capaldi) on drums

Danny Vermin (Pete O’Rourke) on vocals

Ron Dandeneau (SkrewDriver) on bass/flute, replaced by:

John Jones (Reverend Jon Jim Jones) on bass

01 My Girlfriend’s One of the Dead

02 Satan’s Come to Town

03 And Then There Was Blood

04 Crypt Thing

05 The Whistler

06 All Hollows Eve

07 Goin’ Back to Transylvania

08 Belson (Sex Pistols cover)

Matthias Steele’s Haunting Tales of a Warrior’s Past

downfromtheglen — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:51:20 +0000

Haunting Tale's of a Warrior's Past

When you think of some of the greatest epic/power metal out there, rarely does Westerly, Rhode Island, come to mind. These guys released a demo in 1987 (coming soon), followed in 1991 by Haunting Tales. I remember the day I bought this from Sam’s Records, Tapes and Stuff, on Oaklawn Avenue in Cranston, RI. Sam’s was the place to buy metal from all over the world, and, in their early days, bongs, pipes, papers, clips (that would be the “Stuff” in the store’s name). Sam’s went under a few years back after they got raided (twice) for selling pirated techno CDs. Back to Matthias Steele–if you can get past the vocals, you’re in for a treat. These guys are amazing musicians, and I’m actually surprised that they’ve never seemed to make it past the southern RI/eastern CT scene. It took them 17 years to come out with a follow-up CD–2008′s Resurrection. Haunting Tales is good, solid epic/power metal. This is ripped from the original audio cassette, which is virtually impossible to find nowadays. Enjoy!

01 Magick Wand

02 Warrior’s Anthem

03 Father Has Risen

04 Shadow of Illusion

05 Chosen One

06 Return with a Vengeance

07 Tribunal

08 When My Dreams Cry Out

09 To the Guillotine

10 Beyond Stygian Creek

No Strange Flesh Today

downfromtheglen — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:30:08 +0000

Strange Flesh 7"

I wanted to post Providence’s Strange Flesh 7″ today, but I see that lotsofnoise beat me to it a few months back. This is an awesome 7″–check it out! And there’s some band info and flyer scans at culturevoid.

Paul Chain, Genius and Madman

downfromtheglen — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:22:14 +0000

Sometimes a genius, sometimes just plain fucking weird. One of doom’s most prolific geniuses. For the uninitiated, getting a sense of who this guy is can be difficult. He got his start in the late 70s with Steve Sylvester in Death SS, one of Italy’s most influential black metal bands. Then, right around 1984, it appears that he started to lose his mind. His studio output is no less than staggering—since 1984 he’s gone on to make upwards of 40 albums, singles, EPs and splits, and has produced and guested on countless songs and albums.

So where does one begin with Paul Chain? It sounds like a cop out, but start at the beginning. His first solo EP, Detaching from Satan, will give you a good idea of what he’s capable of doing. This is Paul at his best, and from this release it’s easy to see why he’s considered by many to be one of THE godfathers of doom. From there, I’d recommend In the Darkness, Life and Death, Whited Sepulchres, Alkahest, Park of Reason, and Unreleased 1 & 2. A lot of his other stuff is inaccessible and boring (Opera Decima, Emisphere, Cosmic Wind). Some of his very recent stuff can be downloaded from his web site. FYI, he doesn’t go by Paul Chain any more. Now he’s Paolo Catena. Or Paul Cat.

Whatever his name is, he’s a genius when he’s a genius.

High Voltage – Cranston’s contribution to the NWO(US)HM

downfromtheglen — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:15:07 +0000

I don’t know all that much about these guys except that one of the band members lived in Cranston, RI, across the street from a friend. I used to hang out at his house after school when we were in 7th and 8th grade (1980-1981). I recall hearing them practice, and one day we each bought a copy of their single. If I remember correctly, one or both of the songs got some airplay on Providence’s rock station, 94HJY. This 7″ is called Blazing Rock, and has the two tracks “Late Night Ryder” and “Little Girls“. Solid rock in the NWOBHM style.

Album review of Il teatro degli orrori’s Dell’Impero delle Tenebre

downfromtheglen — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:01:41 +0000

Dell'impero delle tenebre

Italy’s Il Teatro degli Orrori (translation: Theater of Horrors), a super group of sorts, with members of One Dimensional Man and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic, burst onto the Italian indie scene in 2007. It’s hard to define these guys, but their influences are clear—Steve Albini, Rapeman, Big Black, The Jesus Lizard, Shellac, The Melvins, The Birthday Party, etc. Frontman Pier Paolo Capovilla is the Italian-born hybrid of David Yow and Jack Nicholson—charismatic and decadent most of the time, with a few bursts of straight up insanity here and there to inspire us to keep on listening. Their first album, Dell’Impero delle Tenebre (translation: Of the Empire of Darkness), is loaded with bizarre references to Baudelaire, fascism, love, and suicide from start to finish. Capovilla’s powerful delivery, and sometimes introspective lyrics, all backed by a noise-rock wall of guitars, make this a worthwhile listen. Unfortunately, its appeal may be limited to those of us that don’t speak Italian, as it’s Capovilla’s personality that pushes this album to the edge of sanity. “Finally she’s dead, the crazy little creature, so now I can drink as much as I want,” says Capovilla with a maniacal stutter at the beginning of the track E lei venne! (And She Came) in a line that alludes to the sonic and lyrical decadence of this album. Musically, the noise rock wall of guitars could easily have been lifted off of any Jesus Lizard album. Lyrically, they’re well-read, funny, and introspective. 9 out of 10.

TRACKLIST:
1. Vita Mia
2. Dio Mio
3. E lei venne
4. Compagna teresa
5. L’impero delle tenebre
6. Scende la notte
7. Carrarmatorock!
8. Il turbamento della gelosia
9. Lezione di musica
10. Canzone di Tom
11. Maria Maddalena