Speed of Blood

Gallhammer - Ill Innocence


As one of the few Waterloo employees who's spent about an equal amount of time amongst both the the metal and the indie-rock communities, I've never understood why the two just don't get down and make love more often. I mean, when i was a kid, crossover was all the phase. Bands like, D.R.I., S.O.D., and Corrosion of Conformity were showing just how much metal and hardcore had in common. It was fun. I mean, hell, we all know that it was J Mascis's band Deep Wound that inspired a bunch of chaps in Birmingham to form Napalm Death which, in turn, helped inspire a bunch of dudes in Florida to create death metal, right? I could play Celtic Frost's first album to someone who'd never heard it before and tell them it was an eighties hardcore band and I'm sure they'd believe it. Hell, I remember when I bought my first Celtic Frost tape it was only because I'd saved up money to buy Fearless Iranians From Hell (awesome San Antonio, TX crossover band) and someone else beat me to it (irony of ironies, that guy eventually became my roommate and is currently playing bass in Austin's great alt-country band, Brothers and Sisters.)
Anyway, this all brings me to Japan's Gallhammer and their second album "Ill Innocence." Taking their inspiration from the proto-Celtic Frost band Hellhammer and British crossover band Amebix, these three Japanese women have forged an album that, though the press refer to them as "black metal" ( a term that has increasingly come to describe less and less), stands head and shoulders above all their "fellow" revivalists today (I'm looking right at you Municipal Waste; a cut-off denim vest does not a classic album make.) With a dash of Oakland's Neurosis (also influenced by Amebix), a bit of what I hear is Dischord era hardcore, and, giving the press their due, some black metal vocals all laid over a simple crossover structure, you have a band that, based on how many times I've listened to it, should have been my number one album of the year in 2007.

Bop Til You Drop

february is now reaching its expiration date; the smell is a bit stale. the rain, the wind, the cold and hail all conspire to keep me locked in this cage. i shaved my beard and a sink full of hair clogging the drains means that it must be saturday and time for another installment of "headbanger's ball."


let's kick things off tonight with a band called Drunk Horse. Born and raised in the swamps of oakland, ca, these intrepid souls kepp rocking even though it seems as if no one's listening. their last album "In Tongues" was fucking awesome, made my top ten for 2005 and sold just a little to the better side of nothing. Already out of print, it can be gotten for a steal on amazon.
this little clip is from 2004 and, after you watch it, will understand why it makes a perfect introduction:




so anyway, elijah's gotta couple of kids and so drunk horse exists in that weird nebulous "are we a local band or are we a touring band cause we never tour anymore?" state. so cyrus, bass player extrordinaire fills his time now in kemado records' Saviours. Made up of members of hardcore band yaphet kotto, these kids have made the first album in serious contention for my top ten list of 2008 with their album "Into Abaddon."





so, anyway, i'm a big fan of anthrax. whether as a tool of terrorism, a killer song (see above) or one of "the big three" back in the eighties, i'm all cheer. so, for all of you fans of "an acute disease in humans and animals that is caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis " (wikipedia) this block is for you:






anyway, we all seem to have been asleep for about ten to fifteen years and as we've woken up, so have all the bands from days gone past; some for bad, some for mediocre, and some for good. At The Gates, of course, is for the good.



anyway, i had an idea for what would come next when i chose the last clip. but, of course, we're all slaves to the fates. i couldn't find a good darkest hour clip (the best american at the gates tribute band) but i di find this



i don't really care what other folks have to say. you guys can all go off in your little corner and argue yourselves blue. in my world, the greatest thrash song written:



and we close this night off with a song that, though not "metal" meant just as much to me musically and, in a metal sense, very visually. i think it may have been the video i saw either before or after the first time i saw "another state of mind" on USA; i'm soory but rick springfield is punk rock in my mind

like willie nelson and julio iglesias once said.....

so i'm slingin' it solo like a kingsly amis character about 2/3s through whatever book it is you're reading.
but that doesn't mean i can't wish you and your loved ones a happy valentine's day.

"remembering when is the lowest form of conversation"

it's a little weird when i think back on that night. there is virtually no friend i still speak to today that i was friends with before that night and almost all the friends i have from temple that i still speak to today, i met after that night.
josh neland and i drove up to copperas cove to go see some bands play at lil' vegas. the austin band gut was playing and they completely kicked my ass. i went out of my way to never see them again so that nothing would ruin the experience of that night.
flickering lights, small stage small room, children packed like sardines and...oh that guitar sound. there's still been nothing like it.
joe turner on a nostalgia kick (different show but same time period):

Buddy Russo (1932-2008)

people come and people go; it's a fact of life. some people leave a larger mark upon the world than others but, still, a mark is made. once, in the distant prehistoric past, i wanted to consider myself an actor. i even went to school for it a bit but, like all things in my life, i have no true follow through.
but that's not important.
what's important are the things that point you in the direction you want to go. for me it was one scene in a movie that came out the year i was born. in a perfect world where the lowest common denominator doesn't rule all that he can see, i could find a clip of this scene on youtube but oh how the gods fail me.
anyway, this scene takes place at the dinner table post-supper. the father is a man of responsibility, almost more than he can shoulder. times are tough. he's stressing and his young son is picking up on it, mimicking his actions. the father soon notices and begins to play along, escalating into a monster face making his son break into laughter.
-"Come here. Give us a kiss."
-"Why?"
-"'Cause I need it."

roy scheider is everything i've ever wanted from an actor and Jaws is the movie that, outside of All That Jazz, got the most out of him. at the same dinner table, when he's made up his mind to cut open the shark that may or may not have eaten "the little kinter kid," the way he opens the bottle of wine over hooper's objections, pours a proper amount for his wife, a proper amount for hooper and then fills his tumbler to the brim is beautiful.
this was an actor who could do his job and do it well without speaking a line. a man who knew how to let his gifted but scenery-chewing collegues shine yet still keeping our attention. robert shaw gets all the love for his milius written speech about the indianpolis (heavily rewritten or adlibed by playwright shaw himself, depending on what story you choose to believe) and it is a good speech (he'll always be the standard i judge henry VII by, eat your heart out tudors) but brody has the most succinct line remembered by all:

"you're gonna need a bigger boat."


rest in peace
Roy Scheider (1932-2008)

Famous Blue Raincoat

I'm at a loss for words these days; these years. so quickly the slid off my fingers onto the page - like dancers on the stage; gene kelley on the street corner, an umbrella in his hand. now they mover more like the sick and the broken; twitching and shaking with parkinson's disease, never seeming to truly fit into their respective spaces.
All of this is an explanation of sorts, an apology. i have not written to you in many a year and i hope you've noticed my absence; at least in passing. these things take time and i find that i have too much of it; time to change each word two or three times over; time enough to rob it of any meaning; time enough to stifle its soul.
I had a dream last night. as dreams go, it was rather plain and listless but it still had a certain charm to it. you were in it. it's not so often that you appear in my dreams these days and when you do it's usually in full make-up and a dress of metaphor. but this one, this one was all you.
When i was younger, much younger than i am now, i woke up one morning with a crush on amy grant. yes, it's silly i know, but it's true. for a full three days i was consumed by my desire for amy grant. i wasn't into christian music at all (just the opposite, in fact, as i had just got my paws on motley crue's shout at the devil) but here i was. anyway, it passed. probably to be replaced by stacy keifer, the love of my fifth grade year.
Anyway, in this dream, i'm at work and it's close to christmas and we're busy. amy grant comes in looking for "her first record" on vinyl for her daughter. all of my desire for her comes rushing back. i spend the rest of the day trying to hunt down that album.
That was my dream. i told you there was nothing to it - bland and boring. but i woke up feeling the desire that i felt when i was eleven. i'd forgotten what that kind of desire felt like. i'd missed it much as i have missed you.
Even now, i watch as these words grow stale. i'm fighting the urge to go back and erase them all, pretending, and through pretending making, these words never existed.
While we're talking about our childhoods, remember when spider-man got married? it was twenty years ago and i was twelve and only had been collecting comics for a few years and spider-man for a few years less than that. john romita jr. did the art and david michelenie provided the words; at least in the issue i had, the one where peter parker proposed to mj. i still had that issue until a few years ago when my house burned down. peter wanted to get his old microscope back and ended up fighting gangbangers and, somehow, this made him realize that he wanted to get married. it makes no sense but every kind of since then. anyway, i'm rambling. my point is, it's gone. all of it. the powers that be have arranged it so that peter and mj were never married. ever. my whole history of reading spider-man is gone. none of it ever happened. it's like it was all a dream.
A dream. heh. i made a funny.
It's all a dream. i'm just gradually waking up. tomorrow it'll be no longer now but then. and you'll still be there.

Ballads At The End Of Time

waiting to cross the street; sixth and lamar; five o'clock traffic, car locked behind car locked behind car; the one in front of me has a sign on the door: "mohair dolls/classes/supplies"; i'm astounded that a) there are mohair dolls and b) there's enough demand to make them that there are classes in how to make them and a company to do that and to sell the supplies needed to do so. there is a niche for everyone in this new economy; if you have a talent or a skill there is an opening for you to fill. i have no talents, no skills; nothing marketable that is. is there a demand for history? i'm reminded of a passage from The Solitudes by John Crowley:

Pierce shrugged, raised eyebrows, shook head. "You know," he said, "when I was a kid I sort of thought that when I became a historian, what I would do, what historians did, was practice history-the way a doctor practices medicine. Maybe because the uncle I grew up with was a doctor. Have an office, or a shop..."
"'Keep thy shop,'" Barr said, "'and thy shop will keep thee.'" He made in his throat the famous Barr chuckle, plummy, chocolaty. "Ben Franklin."
Pierce drank. In the dark of the bar, his old mentor was unreadable. Pierce was fairly sure that Barr's kindly but justly lukewarm descriptio (couldn't call it a recommendation) was chiefly what had kept Pierce from moving automatically into a slot at Noate, and thrown him on the open market. "How," he said, something-not the drink-warming his cheeks suddenly, "would you do it? Practice history. If there weren't Noate."
Barr considered this a long time. The drink before him seemed to glow faintly, like a votive lamp before Buddha. "I think," he said, "that I would take some job, some job I was suited for-my father was a tailor, I worked for him-and I would listen, and discover what questions people asked, that history might answer, or help to answer, even if at first they didn't seem to be historical questions; and I'd try to answer them...."
"Questions like...."
"Questions that come up. I remember there was an old woman who lived over my father's shop. She read cards, told fortunes. She was a Gypsy, my father said, and that's why people went to her. But why, I asked him, do people think that Gypsies can tell fortunes? History could answer that. Give an account, you see." He set down his finished drink; his grin had begun again to grow, his chuckle to rumble in his throat. "The only trouble would be that damn tendency to generalism. I suppose that the first question I tried to answer would lead me to others, and those to others, and so on; and there being no publish-or-perish sort of pressure, no impetus to stop asking and start answering, I might go on forever. End up with the History of the World. Or a history, anyway." He took, with plump fingers, the olive from his glass, and chewed on it thoughtfully. "Incomplete, probably, in the end. Unfinished. Oh, yes. But still I think I would consider myself to have been practicing history."

maybe there is a demand for history; maybe that is my talent: why DO people think gypsies can tell fortunes? maybe it's time i began to practice history; i've had enough practice.