Killdozer – "For Ladies Only" (Touch And Go – T&GLP#39) 1989

As one has already outed "For Ladies Only" by Killdozer......the American Killdozer,and not the not bad actually French Killdozer;....as the greatest covers album of all time earlier in this thread. I thought that maybe I should post it for the less enlightened among us? Yes?

Michael Gerald, or "Mr Romance" for this project, and the Hobson Brothers "Bill" and "The Thinker" respectively,show us how to do a proper cover version. Just the correct amount of irreverence ,with a sprinkling of Irony,played as straight as their own mini-symphonies is a potent recipe for cover version heaven. Killdozer are no strangers to cover versions as most of their fantastic albums regularly had a left field track to cover by such horrible artists as Neil Diamond, Neil Young ,Creedence Clearwater re-drivel,and EMF....unbelieveable!.....I did,however, have a great night out at a Leicester Polytchnic gig by EMF back in 1992,the floor was so drenched in sweat and other slimy substances that i could do a great moonwalk for the kids. (The Killdozer gig was a more reverential experience down the M1 in Northampton a couple of years earlier...with Head Of David...GR8)

Killdozer are,of course, subtly  taking the piss out of these artists, but at the same time they may also be quietly playing tribute to some guilty pleasures going on here.Sophisticated chaps that they certainly are.

If there's one track that desperately needed the Killdozer treatment, it would have to be the terminally awful "American Pie" by the one hit wonder of one hit wonders Don McLean; who to this day still lives off the back of this cheesy monster....a special kind of  Baroque Country, only equaled by Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra,and Glen Campbell in his Jimmy Webb years.

Other terrible acts that get the treatment are Bad Company,and the bloody awful Steve Miller Band!?

A point of disinterest is that the producers of both 'hit' Nirvana albums had something to do with this project. Butch Vig(Never Mind) produced it, and Steve Albini (In Utero) wrote the sleeve notes.

Killdozer had a lucky escape by the looks of it. The Grunge explosion was just around the corner,and all those bands existed shoulder to shoulder at the same time as Killdozer.They all got famous while Killdozer drifted into obscurity,and Michael Gerald became a big shot Lawyer....I guessed he was a clever sod....perhaps too clever? 

NB-there's a lot of thoroughly entertaining links on this one.

PS-one more link,I don't ask for much so sign this please(more info here),she ain't no serial killer,and she's been fitted up,done like a kipper, and thrown under the Bus: CLICK HERE and sign

Tracklisting:

1.Hush (Deep Purple/Billy Joe Royal)
2.Good Lovin' Gone Bad (Bad Company)
3.Burnin' Love (Arthur Alexander)
4.You've Never Been This Far Before (Conway Twitty)

5.One Tin Soldier - The Legend Of Billy Jack (The Original Caste)?
6.Take The Money And Run (Steve Miller Band)
7.American Pie (Don MacLean)
8.Funk #49 (James Gang)

9.Mr Soul (Buffalo Springfield)

DOWNLOAD for your old lady HERE!

Rolo Tomassi – "Demo" (Mayday! – 001) 2005

This is a CD-r....Remember CD-r's.....No?..,and remember how hardcore punk bands each self-released several tapes a month called 'Demo'?..  and then there's MySpace......No?, and CD-r's??? ...why?

That's how bands promoted themselves back in the early naughties. CD-r's disintegrated over time, and MySpace killed itself by totally unnecessary restructuring nonsense and fiddling around with the format. It's still there, floating in cyberspace like the dead astronaut in 2001,after HAL had done for him. Maybe it was HAL who reprogrammed MySpace? If so, would HAL do us all a favor and  please go and reprogram Spotify?Then Twitter, and somehow abandon Musk in space. Probably when one of his stoopid rockets fucks up when he's onboard...can you fix it for us HAL? Please?...Branson and Bozos too while you're at it.

No doubt that Rolo Tomassi are on Spotify too these days,as I saw they did the Download Festival a year or so ago,on the very spot The Monsters Of Rock Festival used to be in the male only days of NWOBHM.....we don't count Girlschool as female by the way.

Rolo don't wear Lycra tights,or have massive curly mullets.Very admirably,Rolo have an unpretentiously sober dress-sense,which is all well and good,but i kinda miss taste-bypassed idiots like Twisted Sister, and Kiss....but they are Americans ;we need Americans to do the things more educated persons would never stoop to.Which leaves us with straight edged wild time signature tennis such as Rolo Tomassi,who are obviously too intelligent to wear make-up,or lycra....lead singer/screamer Eva excepted of course.

This type of Post-Hardcore Math-Jazz does have a tendency to be rather over-clever,and the group makes this mistake on the long third track,which has one of those long silences eventually revealing a wild hidden track, as they obviously had played their mum's Nirvana album and came away impressed by the delayed appearance of "Territorial Pissings" at the end of that horrible record(CD version)....ah well, Never Mind.

Tracklist:

1 Breathing Through A City (Is Much Harder Than Just Breathing) 0:36
2 The Tentatively Titled "Film Noir" 2:28
3 ...And Then The Mannequin Spoke 10:00

DOWNLOAD not the download festival HERE!

No Trend – "Too Many Humans" (No Trend Records – NT 002) 1983

One of the best albums ever made is my humble assessment of this misanthropic ,environmentally aware dissection of our self-made prison. Well its in my top ten anyway...whether you like it as much or not at all, in classic No Trend style I'll say go and kill yourself then think again.

If one complains that there's too many humans on this overcrowded,and incidentally, very isolated spinning Rock (No Planet B reference), then you're accused of being part of the grand conspiracy,headed by Bill Gates.

"They are trying To Kill Us All" cry the internet informed paranoiac.

Simply, like the No Trend lyricist, Gates is just stating the bleeding obvious...THERE ARE TOO MANY HUMANS!...duh. All it will take to finish us all off is for every Chinese person, and there are a billion of the fuckers,to buy a Fridge then we are way beyond the tipping point,and there is NO going back. The result of which is complete and utter annihilation;but as capitalism doesn't have a reverse gear,we're fucked.

And I'm No better.....i got a fridge, i run a diesel car, I'm a part time vegetarian,but i don't buy stuff, except second hand records of course,and i recycle, even though I know it's all shipped to a holding facility in Hong Kong before it goes to landfill in Mongolia;it's actually more carbon friendly to not recycle....but it makes me feel like i'm doing something to help. Then when i'm starving to death in ten years time,i can die without too much guilt.

Global CO2 emissions went up by 16% this year by the way....and we are supposed to be doing something about it!? Let's face it, we breed like rats, but rats will inherit the earth, mainly because they live within their means and don't need all that plastic crap we salivate over....like over priced vinyl for example.

Tracklist:

Side No
A1 Family Style
A2 Blow Dry
A3 Reality Breakdown
A4 Kiss Ass To Your Peer Group
A5 Fashion Tips For The 80's
A6 Do As You're Told
Side Trend
B1 Too Many Humans
B2 For The Fun Of It All
B3 Mindless Little Insects
B4 Happiness Is ...

DOWNLOAD too many records HERE!

No Trend – "Teen Love" (No Trend Records – NT 003) 1984

 

There comes a time in each man's life when he encounters a group so good on all levels that they are beyond critical praise.Even rarer is one that doesn't 'suck' after their first single encounter with fame in their own lunchtimes. The only other example I can only think of  is The Fall,who,even when they were in their not so good period, still ticked all the boxes. No Trend could never match the longevity and consistency of  Mark Edwards tunesmiths,but for a moment, while the USA were becoming either Sonic Youth or The Dead Kennedys,they managed to make nihilistic musical statements on the unpopular subject of the sheer torture of the human condition on a doomed planet. Don't you know we're all gonna die and there's nothing you can do about it? There's No trend and there's No solution.

Well maybe they ain't that Good in fact,things get a bit moody from the 'difficult second album' going onward,but they were always a different band,with almost as meny ex-members as The Fall.However the first album and single were just as perfect as the Martin Bramah Fall epoch.

Of course I'm talking bollocks,but apparently there's an existential crisis going on?

If we were to apply a 'Trend' to No Trend's american rock at the end of the universe it would no doubt be "Post-Hardcore". It's american Rock as seen through  an occluded lens in a bucket full of an alcoholic's blood infused piss.You can clean your windows with it and stare through the stains to watch your neighbours drive their SUV a hundred yards to the mall to buy more stuff.

We're pushing our way to the front of the moshpit in the same way one could imagine a disabled Jew pushing in to be first in the gas chamber......(and before any Anti-vaxx,Trump voter,conspiracy nut flat-earther raises issues about Gas Chambers and climate change stats...firstly fuck off, and secondly, I'm just using Gas Chambers as an analogy for climate change inaction 'tis all)....but the Gas Chamber's already full and we're all singing No Trend's "Too Many Humans" (from their first LP) as a bunch of drugged up rednecks close the air-tight door......then warm,fluoridated but mildly radioactive water gushes out of the shower heads and we drown.At least your corpse will have strong teeth.

Altogether now.....

"Too many fucking humans, 

You breed like rats,

And you're no fucking better! (Repeat until end)"

Hmmmm,maybe they should have said 'and WE'RE no fucking better'...a tad less superior and accusatory in tone than the finger pointing 'You're' That they opted for in the extensive lyrics published above?No-one is innocent.

Tracklist:

A1 Mass Sterilization Caused By Venereal Disease
A2 Cancer
A3 Die
B1 Teen Love
B2 Let's Go Crazy

DOWNLOAD or be too late for the no trend HERE!

The Groinoids – "Lost" (Necro-Tone – LA28/NT21) 2018/1986

When a band has a singer called Mongoloid I think you can guess what you're in for? A trailer park trash vocalist out of his brain on Duff Beer and angel-dust,backed by staggering repetitive punk played at 16 rpm.This is what you'd get if you used the teleport device from the Fly if you teleported Drunks with Guns ,The Melvins,and a housefly covered in dog shit, to the same location at the same time.Emerging out of the theatrical smoke arises four spitting and blood oozing pink masses of meat...but with guitars.

Tracklist:

A1 Mindfuck
A2 Dinkweed
A3 Up Your Bucket
A4 Ain’t
A5 Creepy Little Kid
A6 China Lula
B1 The Vault
B2 Flesh Island
B3 Turtle, Duck & Mule
B4 Crematorium
B5 Spread For The Devil
B6 Ratfink

DOWNLOAD and take the knee to the groinoids HERE!

The Sickness – "Complete Sickness (1979 -1981)"

The group that kinda beat Flipper to it,but were in the wrong town were The Sickness from Boston;a town more famous for its straight edge hardcore puritans,rather than the crawling slovenly gutter punk of The Sickness,and her relatives.

If that wasn't good enough, they then divided like bacteria to become Kilslug and The Groinoids.The Groinoids especially often finding themselves on Hardcore compilations surrounded by a bunch of Dischord wannabees,going on about womens rights and other very noble themes.

Minor Threat they ain't!?The Sickness undoubtedly got Drunk,took class B drugs,and celebrated the seedier side of life. They either meant it, or they were living art objects,reflecting their intended targets in noise. This stuff is for people who won't 'Take the Knee', and I'm not referring to our Eastern European chums....those ethnically pure swarthy mono-browed Hungarians actually mean it when they boo and make monkey noises at the Black English footballers. This music is about,but not by, those cro-magnon survivors who are a casually placed Nazi salute away from actually killing someone who isn't like them.They're just waiting for the next term in office for the horrific Mr Trump,or his endorsed clone;but this time it'll be no-more mr Nice Guy...he wants 'revenge'.

I hear the Donald's approval rating is now above Biden's,so get building that bunker now while you have the chance.....and take some Sickness,Groinoids and Kilslug down there with ya.

Tracklist:

Studio - Outlook Studios, Boston, MA. 1981
1.Corpsemonger
2.Regurgatation
3.Die
4.100 Watts Electrified
Studio - Radiobeat Studios, Boston, MA. 1981
5.Slob
6.Shut Up
Live - CBGB, New York City, NY. 1980
7.Louie Louie - Solid Drip Breakfast
Rehearsal - Boston, MA. 1979
8.Neopolitan Pizza
Live - The Underground, Boston, MA. 1980
9.Blame It On The Dog

DOWNLOAD something sick HERE!

Kilslug – "A Curse" (Stinky Bike – S.B. 002) 1982

Lyrics anyone?...Yes these guys can write it seems!?

Around '82 at the height of the vintage US Hardcore fad, there were some enlightened souls who decided to go in the opposite direction and slow it doooooown.The long shadow cast by Flipper and Swans had rightfully steered some away from the blind-alley of punk stuck in first gear with revs in the red zone and nowhere else to go. To continue the petrolhead analogies (I fucking hate cars!), these clued up slowcore groups took the rev's back down to idling speed,so much so that one could actually hear what they were singing about?

This slowed down Punk rock, nothing mid tempo here, now had choices rather than brainlessly driving into a wall.You could go the quiet introspective route of Low, or the arty direction of Swans, or get brutal like the beyond praiseworthy Drunks With Guns. The fantastically named Kilslug,obviously took the grungy punk route as popularized by Flipper between overdoses.The genre,whatever it was called, also included the magnificent Killdozer,but I think Kilslug got to use the word 'Kil' first I assume. 

Dirge-Punk,Sludge,Post Hardcore,whatever you want to call it,i guess,like Punk proper, led to less attractive Metal offshoots,like Doom Metal,and Sludge-metal,and virtually any prefix you can imagine with Metal added to it.......quite like a bit of Doom Metal personally,as long as the vocalist doesn't try to sound satanic,whatever that may be?....Deranged shouting at the back of the mix is the only requirement vocalistically (made up word)Thank you.

NB:

The long silence and tape disintegration on "Kill The Commies" one assumes is deliberate?....if it isn't it should be.

Tracklist:

A1 Snake Pit
A2 Vampire Fire
A3 Kill The Commies
B1 Elizabeth
B2 A Curse Will Fall

DOWNLOAD the curse of kilslug HERE!

Asbestos Rockpyle ‎– "Dying Of Cancer" (Warpt Records ‎– WPT-003) 1984

One of the best 'Rock' names in 'Rock' was Dinah Cancer (Geddit?), who was in 45 Grave I think...who cares? This use of the phrase is made to look like an undiscovered work by Oscar Wilde compared to ramshackle American duo Asbestos Rockpyle,who seem to have no idea what standard time signatures,or even musical instruments,could possibly be,and why should they(?)...maybe because they couldn't count up to four.

It all sounds like a dumpster emptying a cargo of junk into a disused quarry full of fucked up musical instruments. The lyrical content is not at all your standard literary poetry,with a stubborn refusal to rhyme any of the lines,or even deliver them in sync with the wavering music.

They sound like the bastard child of Half-Japanese and The Happy Flowers;especially when delivering the single best track about the early 80's Punk scene in Washington DC...."D.C. Deadcore".....indeed a classic. 

"The people in hardcore are a bunch of Fucking Dicks"...a erudite observation from underrated (for a reason) singer/lead guitarist/lyricist/producer Paul R.W. Clark of Asbestos Rockpyle, waxing lyrical about Dischord Records and their offshoots.One can't disagree,but then again, this observation could well apply to everyone in the arts.....including Asbestos Rockpyle themselves? And Art it certainly is!?

Tracklist:

A1 Kill The Villagers
A2 D.C. Deadcore
A3 Insanity
A4 Herion
B1 Faces In The Dark
B2 New Year's Resolution
B3 I Like Disco
B4 Addiction
B5 Suicidal Maniac

DOWNLOAD the cure for cancer....suicide....HERE!

The Gordons ‎– "The Gordons" (Gordons ‎– GORDON 2) 1981 + "Future Shock EP" (GORDON 1)1980

I may have mentioned that I reckon these are probably the greatest couple of records to come out of New Zealand. Somehow The Gordons managed to sound like a US Post-Hardcore band several years before stuff like The Phantom Tollbooth, Bitch Magnet and other such Homestead style groups flooded the market;they even outflanked early Sonic Youth.
In some ways the isolation of being trapped on an island in the arse of the planet serves the creative process in the same way that the Galapogos Islands developed weird and wonderful beasts found nowhere else. A bit like West Germany in the seventies, and Japan in the nineties. The fact that this LP+EP evolved independantly of direct american/uk influence is a testament to that sweet isolation.

Tracklisting:

Spik And Span
Right On Time
Coalminers Song
Future Shock
Sometimes
I Just Can't Stop
Growing Up
Laughing Now
Machine Song
Adults And Children

DOWNLOAD if you're called Gordon or not HERE!

The Dead C. ‎– "43 Sketch For A Poster" (Diabolic Root) 1987

The Dead C are Dead good ain't dey?
On their second C-30 of 1987, each member seems to be playing in isolation inside their own cardboard box. Scraping their instruments as if the definition of music was left blank in the dictionary, replaced by a description of what a song might be, written in the blood of a deaf mute.Filling the vacuum with toxic primordial gases.
Its Pol Pot Pop,a Khymer Rouge version of rock, stripped back to a single cell organism playing dead underneath the corpse of Punk Rock in the Killing Fields of Rock'n'Roll.Thats what this is. 

Tracklist:
A1 Crazy I Know
A2 3 Years
A3 Polio
B1 Retune
B2 Light My Fire
B3 3 Years
B4 Crazy I Know

DOWNLOAD these noisy poster boys of pop HERE!

The Dead C ‎– "The Dead See Perform M. Harris" (Diabolic Root) 1987

Comfortably the best band from New Zealand are, obviously, The Dead C. Roundly disliked by musicians everywhere, they perfected the art of sounding incredibly awful, which isn't as easy as it sounds.
I remember,possibly inaccurately, a Dead C member responding to a question about why their records were so badly recorded; to which he replied, "They're not,they are extremely professional and accurate recordings of what we actually sound like."
This C-30 of live rehearsals from early in 1987, is a typical scratchy improvised deconstruction of rock music into somekind of musical no-mans land,strewn with bomb craters full of dirty water,bone fragments and rusty barbed wire. The vocals are inaudible, the guitars sound like they replaced their plectrums with hacksaws,and it all sounds like they were playing in the next room.Perfect.

Tracklist:
A With Help From Max Harris
B Beyond Help From Max Harris

DOWNLOAD without help from max harris HERE!

Flipper ‎– "Gone Fishin' "(Subterranean Records ‎– SUB 42) 1984

We're takin' a bit of a detour as I'm Goin' on Vacation; so appropriatly Flipper's least popular album "Gone Fishin'" will be here on the front page for nigh on a week.

Where am I goin', no-one is askin'?

So I'll tell ya.

During WW2, my father baled out of a crashing Bomber over the coast of Brittany, France, after bombing those darn Nazi Submarine Pens at St. Nazaire. He landed under darkness on Belle Ile, a small island in the Bay of Biscay.The rest of the crew weren't so lucky, as they crashed into the sea,all killed;the tail gunner having also parachuted, but landed in the ruthless waters of the ocean, in February, and perished.

Daddy Zchivago, was avoiding Nazis for three days, then they got him, and locked him up in a castle called 'the Citadel'.After interrogating him for three days they shipped him out to Poland.

The 'Citadel is now a Hotel, so thats where I'm-a-stayin'.So i'm testing my genetic memory for any feelings of deja-vu!?

I can also pay my respects over the graves of the fallen members of my fathers crew.....mostly Canadians I may add.

Also i get to hang out at the monolithic Submarine Pens for some WW2 ghoulery. Passing by Oradour-sur-Glane on the way too.....major league atrocity site.
Flipper are one of those conventional groups that you sorta like, but there's something uncomfortable and contrary about them....like The Fall. Anyway i've grown to like this album a lot,including its inherant unlikeability factor, which is always essential in great art.

Oh yeah......here's the tracklisting and Download link for the Flipper Album.....:


Tracklist:

Comin'
The Light, The Sound, The Rhythm, The Noise
First The Heart
In Life My Friends
Survivors Of The Plague 

Goin'
Sacrifice
Talk's Cheap
You Nought Me
One By One

DOWNLOAD to go fishin' HERE!