To be honest, I don’t know how limited the new tape from NY/NJ-based basement psych duo Purple Knights and NJ trio The Green Dragon is. I know my copy is marked “Batch 1 — 5/5,” so I’m guessing that when all is said and done, there won’t be a lot of them floating around, but I’d think that if you were up for getting in touch with the bands and acquiring one for yourself, they wouldn’t tell you no.

I’ve posted a couple videos from Purple Knights before. The twosome is comprised of Ben Smith and Zack Kurland, both of Sweet Diesel, the former also of The Brought Low, the latter pulling double-duty in The Green Dragon, and to the best of my knowledge, the tape Purple Knights and the Green Dragon is their first physical output behind a self-titled Purple Knights digital-only EP. I won’t take any credit, but the first time I heard the band’s gritty, underproduced but still warm approach, I immediately thought they should get on putting out a series of super-limited tapes, and I told Kurland as much. No doubt in my mind he’d already had the thought, but it’s nice to be proven right by the sound of Purple Knights and the Green Dragon, which even though it takes a few surprisingly rocking turns throughout the 27-minute duration, is remarkably suited to the inherent compression of the format.

As to those surprising turns: The tape is split (obviously) into two sides, the first dubbed “Purple Knights” and the second “The Green Dragon” with an emblem sticker on each side to indicate which is which. Not to read too much into the atmospheres, but Purple Knights find room for a surprising breadth in a short span of time, also keeping a considerable flow between the four songs on each side, proffering blown-out buzzsaw riffs — seriously, put some screams on it and you’ve got black metal — that nonetheless hearken directly to Judas Priest traditionalism on the first half of the release while The Green Dragon – comprised of Kurland on guitar, Jennifer Klein on bass and Nathan Wilson on drums — kicking into a bassy classic rock groove on the latter, finding a niche in a space somewhere between crusty classic psychedelic rock and more driving demo-type energies on “Johnnie’s Spider” before offering final shelter on the Lamp of the Universe-esque “Acadia” to close out.

But what’s really most shocking about Purple Knights and the Green Dragon are its straightforward aspects, whether it’s Green Dragon‘s “Johnnie’s Spider” or the classic metal of Purple Knights‘ “Heathen Realms” opening side one with some showoff guitar soloing and garage-metal chugging set to drawling, echoing vocals for a malevolent feel. Played directly off the spacey explorations of “Whiteout,” it’s a side of Purple Knights that Kurland and Smith haven’t really shown yet, and while the production on the tape is rough to the point of harshness as the minimalism of “Whiteout” gives way to the ultra-aggressive “Touching Stone,” the duo find a way to work that to their sonic advantage, masking the full expanse of their reach in the overarching rudimentary feel.

I have to wonder at this point how Purple Knights or Green Dragon might sound in a real, out-of-the-basement studio, but if either outfit were to put out a couple more of these kinds of releases before getting there, I don’t think they’d be doing themselves a disservice in allowing some of the ideas presented on Purple Knights and the Green Dragon to further solidify across a series of recording sessions. Whatever their intent, they complement each other well on this split but are still working in different enough realms to be distinct. Particularly for a first pressing from either band, I wouldn’t ask anything more than that and I’m looking forward to what the next batch holds.

Purple Knights, “Pray for Protection”

Purple Knights on Thee Facebooks

The Green Dragon on Thee Facebooks

My only issue with the limited edition tape of their new Dead Ends EP that Shroud Eater put out through Primitive Violence Records is that so far I haven’t been able to bring myself to open the damn thing. Oh, I’ve heard the EP itself (review here), so I know it kicks plenty of ass, but looking at the limited packaging — which just seems like it should have a little cutout space near the top so it can hang on a peg in some record and or head shop 20 years ago — I just can’t pull those staples out and open it up.

Primitive Violence is the band’s own imprint — there’s a CD of Dead Ends coming later this month on The Path Less Traveled Records as well — and so I take this tape as kind of the definitive version of the album, what a certain British label seems consistently to refer to as the “diehard edition.” Only 22 were made, they sold out just this past Tuesday (there are more regular tapes left), and here’s what’s included:

No, Pinhead from Hellraiser doesn’t come with it, but everything else in the bottom part of that collage does. It’s one-stop shopping for anyone who’d want to show off their Shroud Eater affiliation, with a sticker, patch and pin, and that rules in and of itself, but there’s also the full-color lyric sheet, transparent red tape and — as you can see in the top right corner of the pic above — also a limited edition figurine made in Peru that actually seems to have been the impetus behind there only being 22 of these made, since the people who made the “Death charms” in turn died and these are the last ones ever. Dead Ends indeed.

All this adds up not only to something really special for collector nerds like me and those converted to the cassette nostalgia cultism, but a complete, every-level experience for what in a lot of band’s minds would probably be a toss-off EP release. Cheers to Shroud Eater for going all out in putting the tape of Dead Ends together (even the regular one looks pretty sweet) and continuing to highlight the appeal of physical media in an age regarded by squares as digital. Awesome.

Shroud Eater, “Tempest” from Dead Ends

Shroud Eater’s merch page

Shroud Eater on Thee Facebooks

As one expects to a certain degree with jam-based space rock, Space Mushroom Fuzz has proven to be pretty prolific in its almost a year of releases. During that time, Adam Abrams (also of Blue Aside and Palace in Thunderland), who handles vocals, writes, records and plays guitar, bass, sometimes drums and synth, has released three full-lengths, a single and an EP — the last of which just came out last month. These self-releases were digital-only at first, but CD-Rs have followed and Abrams has collected the first two LPs — When Time Trippers Collide and Something Weird’s Going On – and the two-song Trapped in the Past single onto a two-cassette boxed set called, fittingly enough, Seeing Double.

Seeing Double is limited to 20 copies with artwork by Ralph Walters (see also Blue Aside, Groan, etc.) and comes packaged like a book on tape from grammar school in a plastic case that houses both tapes at once, and the White Rabbit out front is nothing but appropriate for Abrams‘ ultra-trippy sonics contained within, whether it’s “Shine on You Crazy Train Pt. 1″ from When Time Trippers Collide or the robo-acoustic swirl of “Scientist Sparks” from Something Weird’s Going On. Universally, the music is immersive, if somewhat underproduced, and intriguingly unpredictable. Sometimes Abrams and drummer John Belcastro embark on a go-long-go-strange space jam, and sometimes Abrams keeps the structures relatively terrestrial, as on the still-Floydian “The Other Side of Life,” the B-side to Trapped in the Past, which shows that just because Abrams puts a track to a verse and chorus doesn’t mean he can’t also make it as bizarre as he may so choose.

And if anything is apparent throughout Seeing Double it’s that Abrams so chooses to make it pretty damn bizarre. There’s a real turning point in methodology perceptible between the two full-lengths for when the synth became involved, and though the two full-lengths were home-recorded, Trapped in the Past found Space Mushroom Fuzz with the drums done by Clay Neely of Black Pyramid at Black Coffee Sound. Sure enough, the single is the fullest sounding slice on offer, but there’s still enough richness in “There’s Something Weird Going On Pt. 2″ to convey the ’80s prog rock moodiness that Abrams is going for, low end serving as a bed for the sharp guitar solo and synth percussion. Each of the Space Mushroom Fuzz releases was recorded relatively quickly — the single took the longest — but there’s a progression at play over the course of the material on Seeing Double that one finds continued on the newest full-length, Man in the Shadow – not included in the cassette box set, but already released last month. One can no more stop a space rock catalog from expanding than one can stop space itself, it would seem.

So be it. I don’t know if Abrams would ever put together a band to play live as Space Mushroom Fuzz, but the studio excursions have proved interesting and varied to date and there seems to be no slowing down in the project’s will toward interstellar survey. Again, there are only 20 copies of Seeing Double made, so for a lucky few space rockers, Abrams and company provide a curio and collectors piece as much as a summation of the project’s first couple installments.

Space Mushroom Fuzz, Something Weird’s Going On (2012)

Space Mushroom Fuzz on Bandcamp

Space Mushroom Fuzz on Thee Facebooks

They only made 50, and when I was in the process of writing up Romero‘s new album, Take the Potion (review here), I stumbled on the band’s prior cassette single — yes, a cassingle — dubbed Couch Lock/In the Heather. Released through Triceratrax Records last year, the limited pressing comes complete with red tape, a 7″ x 14″ foldout (the kind that would normally house a 7″ record) with 3D graphics and 3D glasses to see them. Sorry, but that’s frickin’ awesome.

Both the included tracks on the tape, “Couch Lock” and “In the Heather,” were re-recorded for Take the Potion, but neither is wanting for production on the single either, even if they’re somewhat rawer than they’d wind up. I’ll admit when I shelled out the cash for the tape (I think it was five bucks), it was the packaging that drew me in — the art is by Miranda Martin and guitarist/vocalist Jeffrey Mundt – but it’s not like the Wisconsin trio put all this effort and detail into a practice tape.

And speaking of detail, even the inside of the tape liner — the J-card, as I learned this week that they’re called because of their bend — has a 3D design:

But the righteousness of the design goes further than just the 3D stuff. The layout of the lyric sheet on the inside of the foldout poster (designed by drummer Ben Brooks) is also well thought out and stylized, not to mention hand-numbered:

Of course, there’s good news and bad news. Taking latter first, the pressing of 50 is sold out. I bought the last tape even before I was done with the album review. So unless Romero decide to do another round somewhere down the line, it’s a goner. The good news, however, is that Couch Lock/In the Heather is still up for a pay-what-you-want download, so if you’re thinking of hitting it up, there’s still some opportunity. They’ve even got the 3D images up in case you have a spare pair of glasses around.

To that end, here’s the stream from the Romero Bandcamp:

Romero, Couch Lock/In the Heather Single

Pictured above with the badass package in which it and the new Backdoor Jane/Wooden Nickels 7″ (listen/see here) arrived, the Live at Relay limited cassette from Ohio space rocking progressives EYE is a wonder of antiquated technology. Not so much the tape itself, but the cosmic expanse that the Columbus four-piece managed to fit thereupon, awash in Moog, synth, Hammond and even a bit of mellotron on side two. The band filmed a session for DonewaitingTV last June, comprised of three jams — “Usurpers” and “Restorers,” both of which appeared on EYE‘s Center of the Sun (review here, track stream here), along with the 19:36 dronedelica soundscape “Dream,” aptly-titled for its otherworldly vibing.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but if you like your Hawks windy and your Floyds a little less than red, more on the Pink side, then EYE is a band to whom you should commence grooving forthwith. Presented in the only-100-copies tape version, the rich bass of Matt Bailey comes through stellar on “Usurpers,” holding down a thick, natural groove while drummer Brandon Smith, Moog/synth/organist Adam Smith and guitarist Matt Auxier combine vocals to add to the progged-out trippery, and while one might think an aesthetic as lush as theirs would suffer on what’s widely regarded as a limited format, the effect the tape has is just making the material sound even more classic than it otherwise might.

Particularly considering this material was captured live — hence Live at Relay – the balance between the patient aspects of EYE‘s sound and their the-space-shuttle-has-just-taken-off-and-you’re-riding-shotgun rush is striking, and with continuous play on, it’s even easier to get lost from one side to the next. Both sides are also almost exactly the same length, right around 19:30, so that helps as well in that there isn’t much delay between them. All told, for about 39 minutes of live EYE, the Live at Relay tape has about everything a would-be sonic cosmonaut could ask of it. Even on “Dream,” when the ground is so far gone you can’t even see the people standing there, the band keeps a sense of someone standing behind the controls, which — as you probably guessed — are set for the heart of the sun.

The aforementioned 7″ is sold out already, but there are still copies of Live at Relay available for a whopping seven dollars at EYE‘s Bigcartel store, and consider it an advisable purchase. If you need further convincing, the video of “Usurpers/Restorers” culled from the same session is the way to go:

EYE, “Usurpers/Restorers” Live at Relay Recording Studio

It’s a bleak psychedelic dronefest and nobody’s invited when you press play on Blut‘s Drop Out and Kill tape. The UK duo of N.B. and S.M. have released pretty much everything they’ve done on cassette, and listening to the Major Destroyer Records release of this album, which was originally reviewed  on CD, I can hear why. The band’s unremittingly extreme tin-can gnarl comes across even nastier through the analog compression, finding the Dorset-based outfit even more straddling the line between blackened lo-fi and stone-drone sludge, like Electric Wizard‘s misanthropy played at half speed somewhere down the block. Sometimes all you get it low-end rumble and malevolent echoing.

On headphones, with the volume up, the effect is even more grating. Blut‘s underlying drum groove is there — straightforward and slow — somehow managing to cut through a mountain of tonal lurch on opener “Aeon Long Death/Alcoholic on Cloven Hoof,” their anti-you-and-everything-else stance apparent from the very first second of the song. I said when I reviewed the CD that the band were probably unfit for just about any human ears, and I stand by that, since they push extreme sludge to what I consider new heights of fuckall. Whether or not one puts on Blut as the soundtrack to their sunny-day barbecue is irrelevant — they’re genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s come before them and I consider Drop Out and Kill laudable just for that. That Blut have developed a clear sense of purpose over the last couple of years and releases like Grief and Incurable Pain (review here) and Ritual and Ceremony (review here) and turned spite into aesthetic is where I think they have most succeeded. The farther out they go, the less listenable they get, the better they become. They’re getting closer to (at least what I see as) their goals for the band.

If I’m overthinking it, well, I’m supposed to overthink it. Still, the foreboding drone of “Murder Hallucination” and “Skulls.Coffins.Nails” isn’t happening in a vacuum, and as much as Blut are casting off elements of traditional songwriting — verses, choruses, etc. — they are working in an established sonic sphere of extreme drone doom. Noise aficionados would probably hear Drop Out and Kill and call it straightforward because it has guitar and bass, but when I put on this tape, I hear the roots laid down by SunnO))) and Sleep’s Dopesmoker taken to vicious, dark, new places. That Blut include a side-two cover of Boston outfit Nightstick‘s “Ultimatum” — they call it “Ultimatum (Yog-Sothoth)” — only demonstrates their awareness of their own lineage. It also evens up the sides and gives Drop Out and Kill even more horrifying audio, but yeah, the other thing too.

Fact is, whatever level you want to approach them at, Blut aren’t about to make it easy for you. What they’re going to do — on tape or any other format — is crash and drone and scream and emit some of the most fucked up noise I’ve ever heard. That’s their thing, and whether you hear it on CD or on cassette, if you consider yourself a fan of the sonically abrasive, you should probably hear it. Tapes have the advantage of being cheaper and sounding fucked up. That suits Blut well.

Blut’s Blogspot

Major Destroyer Records

Sure, they look friendly enough, but UK sludgers Gurt cake on some of the filthiest downtuned mud coming out of the Isles these days. Their 2012 EP, You Ain’t from around these Parts? (video here) was a lurching slab of viciousness, and I was psyched to discover recently that Superhot Records (see also Trippy Wicked, see also Stubb) released a compilation of some of their earlier works. Dubbed Collection and limited to 50 copies hand-numbered — I got #26 — the orange tape culls together Gurt‘s 2011 full-length, Redwin, on side one, and the prior 2010 EP, Volume 1, on side two.

This is exact type of purpose I like for the tape format. Not just commodified nostalgia (is there any other kind?) for the early ’90s, but something a collector would want, a really low-key release, small, cheap, but still something cool for the people to have who want it. As I hadn’t heard either Volume 1 or Redwin when they came out, Collection was a perfect opportunity to get myself acquainted with the beginnings of the band. Starting at the start, as it were.

They don’t, though. Redwin is the second, the newer, of the two releases on Collection, and it was pretty clearly a conscious decision to put it first. Relatively speaking, it’s more realized, cleaner-sounding and more professional. Though the span between Volume 1 and Redwin had only been a year, Gurt have a more definite idea of the kind of drunken cacophony they’re shooting for on a song like “Swoffle,” which slurs out lines like “I’ll sink your battleship/She floats my boat” as a setup for the Led Zeppelin cover “Rock and Roll.”

Both sides of the tape wind up featuring covers, first Zeppelin and they tackle AD/DC‘s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll)” on side two, but Gurt definitely make the classics their own, dirtying them up and treating them to vocalist Gareth Kelly‘s rasping screams. For showing the band at a more formative stage, Volume 1 is even rawer than Redwin, fatter in the low end and launching with “Fucknose,” which had shown up on side one as well, all mean and primitive. The toying with country-isms Gurt showed on You Ain’t from around these Parts? was beginning to crop up in the banjo intro to Redwin, but on the three tracks of Volume 1, they weren’t quite there yet and it was straightforward pummel and addled fuckall.

To finish, Collection delves even further into Gurt‘s primordial ooze, rounding out with a “rough mix” of the song “Soapfeast” that actually sounds more like a rehearsal room demo. Wherever this version comes from, it lives up to the “rough” part of its listing, and I mean that as a compliment. The track showed up last year alongside “Dudes with Beards and Cats” on Gurt‘s split with the since-defunct Dopefight, and it makes a fitting conclusion to Collection‘s quick, devolutionary trip. Any rawer and they probably wouldn’t be there to start with.

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of spiked tea, but Collection is a welcome curio and a cool way for anyone who’d dare to to get indoctrinated by Gurt‘s plodding sludgeisms. The orange cassette, the limited number, that’s all really fun stuff, but in the end, the songs win out as its biggest appeal, and that’s all you can really ask of it.

Gurt on Thee Facebooks

Superhot Records

Proffering thicker-than-thou tones and churning filth-laden plod, the debut cassingle from Hands I Annul Yours – despite being instrumental but for a couple samples — makes no attempt to soften its perspective. With just the two tracks, “Asking for Death” and “Grind Humanity,” the limited-to-100-copies red-tape release on Major Destroyer Records nests itself in the bowels of misanthropic sludge riffing, raging in a way that would seem to contradict its lumbering pace but winds up fitting right in with it.

The two-piece outfit of Kyle Anderson and Blake Jette (Mike Mulen seems also to have been involved in production and art) recorded Asking for Death/Grind Humanity. Beginning with a sample of cult leader Michael Travesser from the documentary Inside a Cult, “Asking for Death” lunges for the eardrums with tonal largesse and formidable crash, gradually unfolding to what actually winds up being the more accessible of the two central instrumental progressions on the tape before devolving into noise and more sampling. “Grind Humanity” is slower and begins more straightforwardly, but winds up mired in noisy, droning fuckall that even more than Travesser‘s disparaging the empty frivolities of modern living speak to Hands I Annul Yours‘ feelings on the subject.

Notes are held and droned out and crashes are well-timed. Before the halfway point, an echoing sample provides transition into the faster second half of the track, a build that climbs to a righteously heavy peak before cutting back to washes of feedback noise that last over the course of a long minute-plus fade. The whole thing is over in just about 10 minutes (unless you’ve got your tape player set on continuous), but Hands I Annul Yours leave a lasting impression nonetheless. Info on the band is sparse — they recorded in Minnesota and this is a one-time-only pressing — and no real bio pops up on Major Destroyer‘s page or Bandcamp site, so their overall presence is minimal, and likely on purpose. It would almost be out of character with the music if Hands I Annul Yours wanted to be found.

But if you’re telling me you’ve got a red, 100-copies-only one-time pressing of a killer obscure sludge band’s demo, and it gives me an excuse to type the word “cassingle,” I’m telling you sign me up. So yeah, sign me up. Tape also comes with a download. This shit rules:

It’s been a full 18 years since Stoner Witch was released as the second of three albums the Melvins would put out through Atlantic Records, and I still feel like there’s just no keeping up with it. The quick turns in “Sweet Willy Rollbar,” the immediate throwoff of “Skweetis,” the before-it-was-cool Morricone whistles of “Roadbull,” the Side Two weirdness of “Shevil,” and “Lividity.” It’s probably not the best album from this era of the band — I’d give that title to 1993′s Houdini — but Stoner Witch is one of those records that has a language all its own, an album that you can walk up to someone, go, “Dude, Stoner Witch!” and know immediately by their reaction if you’ve got a new friend.

Listening to Stoner Witch on tape — similar I suppose to listening to it on vinyl, but cheaper and boxier — it’s easy to lose track of the parts, so that as you come around to the slow progression and creepy whispers of “At the Stake” at the end of Side One, it’s from a mash of early ’90s avant heavy rock. The tape, which is clear — awesome — was worth the five bucks I paid before I even put it on, and though I’ve owned Stoner Witch on CD for many years now, the inherent compression of the format makes a big difference in the actual listening experience, as the high and low ends seem pushed together as King Buzzo‘s vocals, zit-like, are forced to the surface of the songs.

I guess this is “commercial” Melvins as much as something like that ever existed, but let’s face it, without the push Atlantic gave them and the work they did supporting Houdini, Stoner Witch and 1996′s Stag, they wouldn’t be the band they are today, touring 50 states with a new live record out what seems like every six weeks or so. That’s not to say the Melvins weren’t working on their own terms at all times — to think that the abrasive noise at the start of “Magic Pig Detective” came out on a major label is fucking astounding — but these full-lengths, along with others along the way in their massive discography and 30-year tenure, helped define the band they’d become. Whichever you pick as your favorite, and whichever format your hear it on, Stoner Witch is a classic.

And should you happen to stumble into the tape as I did, hopefully you also enjoy getting lost in it all over again. If the future’s more your taste, here’s this:

Melvins, Stoner Witch (in full)

First of all, I know one of the big gripes with tapes is that they look lousy, not enough artwork, and so forth, but Monster Magnet‘s 25 …..Tab looks friggin’ awesome. The half-Planet of the Apes Bullgod Statue of Liberty’s extended arm draws the eye vertically in a way it never did on CD or vinyl, and the cardboard stock of the liner is durable enough to stand up to the ages it’s already seen.

I picked up 25 …..Tab recently at Sound Exchange, my local CD joint in Wayne. They have a whole wall of tapes and they’re usually a little on the expensive side for what I’m willing to shell out on a cassette, but I think they’re just as happy to have the room, which if you’ve ever tried to walk down either of the two aisles in the place you’ll know is in short supply. In the end, it cost me circa $5, and has proved worth every penny.

The album is readily available on CD. SPV reissued it and Monster Magnet‘s 1991 landmark Spine of God debut in 2006, and it was out before that as well. I have those editions, but this tape is the original US issue on Caroline Records from 1993. That’s still two years after it came out in Europe on Glitterhouse, but it’s the earliest domestic release and it’s 20 years ago either way and I was stoked to find it. With just the four tracks “Tab…,” “25,” “Longhair” and “Lord 13,” it’s as psychedelic as Monster Magnet ever got during this era of the band.

Or, you know, any other, since it was their most psychedelic era.

And their ultra Hawkwindian jamming on “Tab…” comes across excellently on the tape, sounding all the more raw and classically compressed. The song is an EP unto itself at over half an hour long, and it takes up the entirety of side A, which makes “25,” “Longhair” and “Lord 13″ something like an incremental return to earth, the latter being the most straightforward of the bunch, despite all the backing mouth noises and echoes from Dave Wyndorf, whistles and guitar effects and the rest built around a solid guitar strum and percussion line.

By the time they get there, it’s been a long trip. “Tab…” was always considered an EP even though technically speaking it’s has more of a runtime than Spine of God, and its relative obscurity in the Monster Magnet catalog is no less a factor two decades on than it ever was, considering nobody’s sure yet what to call the damn thing, whether it’s Tab, Tab 25, 25 Tab, or 25 …..Tab, which I took right off the cover. Any name you give it, however, it remains unique in the band’s discography and as warped a tape as you could ever hope to find.

Why tapes? They’re cheap, for one. And they’re analog. And they’re awkward. The flat platter of an LP has grace to it, and a CD too, on a smaller scale. A tape is clunky and weird and boxy and as ill-fitting as your 15-year-old self and did I mention cheap? The first albums I ever bought were on tape, and in a way, I feel as in-between generations as a tape must, having been sandwiched in format succession by records and compact discs.

Plus, with some (as with records), you don’t even know where one song is supposed to end and another to begin. So yeah, tapes. And if you’ve ever read anything Chris “Woody” MacDermott has written for this site, or had any interaction with him of any kind, the name “Duuude, Tapes!” for this new feature should make perfect sense.

We start with a couple sent over by Prairie Fire Tapes, an imprint based in Winnipeg that specializes in obscure-type limited whathaveyou from a variety of styles. The sister label to Dub Ditch Picnic, they recently shot over two tapes for me to check out. Oak‘s Silent Spring, which is released on the label, and the 2012 self-titled debut from local sludge devils, Scab Smoker.

Scab Smoker, Scab Smoker

It’s a rough, blown-out, cave-echoing morass of noisy sludge. At times, Scab Smoker‘s Scab Smoker rages with punk animosity — a glued-on and peeling label on the plain cassette itself only enhances that atmosphere — and then the Winnipeg-local three-piece slam on the breaks and effect a huge, fucked-up lurch. The six-song outing — it moves quickly and I’d call it an EP — was self-produced and self-released, and here and there are moments of discernible bass, drums and guitar, particularly in their more Sabbathian moments, and maybe even some burgeoning melodies, but for the most part it’s a rough, demo-sounding barrage of noise, buzzsaw guitar, heavy-reverb vocals and compressed-cymbal lumber. I dig it, but it’s not an easy listen. Still, the sense of worship runs strong throughout and the tones are flat-out mean. “Death by Natural Causes” and “Call of the First Aethyr” make for a sound closing duo, and I’d wager their attack is no less deranged-sounding in a moldy basement than it is coming through the speakers of my tape player. They’re all but absent on the interwebs — no word on whether that’s ideology or they just haven’t gotten around to it — but there’s an old Scab Smoker MySpace page with a demo of “Black Queen” you can check out.

Oak, Silent Spring

An official Prarie Fire release with a pro-printed liner and the label logo screened onto the orange translucent tape itself, Oak‘s Silent Spring harkens to ethereal Sleep worship in its rhythms and vocals and finds the Swedish four-piece with a well-conceived execution of post-stoner ideologies. The riffs that begin opener “The Obligation to Endure” are thick and seem set to climb a holy mountain, but Oak are also relatively quick to play off those ideas by shifting into meandering post-rock jams, making Silent Spring atmospheric in its less brash moments and enhancing the overall listen. The sound is clear and not blown-out, but still rough enough to give the six-track full-length a natural vibe to go with its strong track-to-track flow, and while its groove isn’t built solely on massiveness of tone, Silent Spring satisfies on that level as well, thick reverberations sustaining from hard-hit guitars even as post-metallic flourishes of effects play out alongside. “Tribal”-type percussion feels overly familiar, and they take their time getting where they’re headed, but Oak do a lot to distinguish themselves throughout these tracks, and their efforts aren’t wasted. Hit them up on Thee Facebooks or the Prairie Fire Tapes website for more info, or listen to the 13-minute “The Obligation to Endure” at the Oak Bandcamp.

I’m sure that in your lifetime you’ve heard a line so catchy that you wanted to make a whole song out of it. Well, Electric Wizard have too. The only difference is they actually wrote the song with the catchy line in the first place as well. So what you get with “Legalise Drugs & Murder” is some of the most stripped down Electric Wizard to date, the seminal UK doomers referencing themselves lyrically — the title being taken from a verse in “The Chosen Few” from 2007′s landmark Witchcult Today full-length — even as they continue to reference a slew of horror flicks, Sabbath, and, of course, the devil.

The Dorset mainstays released “Legalise Drugs & Murder” as a 7″ single earlier this year through Rise Above, coupled with the track “Murder & Madness.” Decibel magazine included a new 2012 demo of the track “Satyr IX,” which originally appeared on 2010′s Black Masses. And ever ones for outdoing themselves, the Jus Oborn-led troupe (of which I believe the picture above is outdated in terms of rhythm section) culled together those three songs as side A of a cassette EP called, of course, Legalise Drugs & Murder, that’s included exclusively with the Oct. 2012 issue of Terrorizer, the cover story of which — well look at that — also just happens to be on Electric Wizard.

So it’s an exclusive, limited Electric Wizard tape, that they’ve released to go with this one issue of Terrorizer and then it’s gone, off into catalog completist obscurity. Should go without saying I was dying to get my hands on one. I put word out on Thee Facebooks that if any kind soul in the UK could help me out, I’d gladly pay for the mag, shipping, etc., and it wasn’t five minutes before a hero emerged. Huge thanks go out to Phil Steventon of Stafford for taking it upon himself to send me a copy of the mag and the tape. It’s been kicking ass all over the tape  players in my car and office since.

The song itself emphasizes the best parts of Wizard‘s do-a-lot-with-a-little ethic, cycling its title line as a chorus a chant while peppering in a few verses for good measure and rounding out with hypnotic repetition of the line “children of the grave.” I had thought maybe they’d include a “Satan’s slaves” to complement, since that’s how it worked in “The Chosen Few,” but they don’t even go that far, just letting the sleepy groove and malevolent fuzz carry the song out. “Satyr IX” is a grittier version of the original and “Murder & Madness” is five and a half minutes of horror atmospherics, nodding low end and whispering creepiness — a decent setup for the perversions that ensue on side B.

One might recognize “Patterns of Evil” from Black Masses, but not by much. The remix Electric Wizard – Oborn is credited as producer/mixer, though guitarist Liz Buckingham shares songwriting credit — have given the song has made it altogether rougher-sounding than it was on the album, and if they weren’t pleased with the original version, I can only wonder what that might mean for the sound of their next record, if they’re thinking that far yet. “Lucifer (We’ve Gone too Far)” is darkly psychedelic as was “Murder & Madness,” though more manic, with repetitive incantations of either one portion of its title or the other amid samples and a bizarre rush, and though the closer “Our Witchcult Grows…” is no less referential than the track “Legalise Drugs & Murder,” the song itself actually has little in common with the Witchcult Today title-cut from which it’s derived.

Instead, they close out the Legalise Drugs & Murder tape with strange, effects-laden chanting. It might be filler, but if so, it’s effective on the level of mood, keeping the cult horror vibe at the fore to end of an already strange listen. If this tape is any indication of where Electric Wizard are headed with their next full-length, then things could be taking a turn for the weird any minute now. Of course there’s no sure guarantee that it is or isn’t a sign of their direction overall, but it’s fun to speculate, and Legalise Drugs & Murder may just end up as a blip on the band’s discography, but it’s a cool listen and something I was glad to get while the getting was good.

The sun-drenched wonder you see in the photo above is the shelf unit at my office (I work here). Top to bottom, it’s got a turntable that needs a new belt, a Mini-Disc player (I used to use them for interviews and just kind of happened into the thing; it’s there now because I think it’s neat), dual cassette deck, 5-CD changer and receiver. The speakers on either side are Infinity studio monitors acquired at a discount for review, and there’s a subwoofer below that’s not pictured. I don’t always use it, because frankly my computer has some decent speakers as well and so I don’t really need it all the time, but sometimes, when I’m working late and no one else is around, there’s nothing else quite like it.

Of the components, the cassette deck is the newest. I hooked it up just this afternoon after finding it the other day laying around the house. I asked The Patient Mrs. what was up with it and she said it was part of the stereo she had as a kid (we’ve been together long enough that I already knew that), and as it was currently not in use, I immediately raised an eyebrow at the possibility.

That was a few days ago, and it wasn’t until today that I finally brought the thing to work and plugged it in. Thinking I was all smart, I grabbed what I thought were some spare A/V cables to go with but turned out to be the camera connector. Fortunately, also at the office, I found these laying around:

Monster Cables! That’s right. Today, I hooked up a cassette player with Monster Cables. A format that’s only “come back” as much as it has over the last couple years because it sounds crappy — hooked up like it’s part of an overpriced home theater. Hey, I roll with what I can find that I don’t have to pay for.

The impetus for this whole thing was the recent purchase of three tapes from Acid Punx Records. I’ve bought tapes here and there for a while now — I have a cassette player in my car and have considered it a point of pride for the seven years I’ve had it — but these were different. Mostly those tapes cost about 50 cents. These tapes cost $10 each.

Yes. I spent $30 on tapes. $35, actually, when you add shipping. I’d been turned onto Boston doomers Ice Dragon‘s newest album, Dream Dragon, in a thread on the forum, and I really dug it. In an all-too-familiar mix of impulse and strategy, I thought as I investigated various purchase options that I’d better pick up some older stuff that was available in limited runs before I missed out. The psychedelically cinematic Dream Dragon — which came out last month and is a pay-what-you-want download at Ice Dragon’s Bandcamp page — doesn’t seem to have a physical pressing yet anyway, so from Acid Punx, I got their 2007 self-titled and 2011′s The Sorrowful Sun instead.

Both tapes are first pressings, limited to 100 copies (the self-titled is a reissue) and pretty clearly homemade — all of which I like about them. While I was putting them in my virtual shopping cart, I stumbled on an Elder tape also for sale called Demos & Live (2007-2010) and couldn’t resist. The result:

It was actually pretty nerve-racking waiting for them to come in the mail. Not that Acid Punx took an exceedingly long time to send them or anything, but I’ll admit to feeling a little silly having shelled out $35 for three tapes. If I was at the grocery store, I’d be staring at the “Unit Price” sticker and punching myself in the head. Nonetheless, when they finally came, I heaved a sigh of relief and immediately put the Elder on in the car.

With the anticipation of seeing them over Labor Day weekend at SHoD in Connecticut mounting and that recent stream of their Armageddon Records vinyl, Spires Burn/Release, I’ve been on something of a kick. Of the tape, I’ll say that Elder were a much, much different band in 2007 than they are half a decade later. Guitarist/vocalist Nick DiSalvo lets loose some pretty vicious sludgy screams, and especially on tape, it sounds like the material was recorded right on a room mic in the rehearsal space.

There are three demo tracks — “1162,” “Red Sunrise” and “Black Midnight” — and two live cuts — “Gemini” recorded at SHoD in 2009 and “Riddle of Steel” from Valley Homegrown TV in 2010.  As you might expect, the newest is the cleanest-sounding of the bunch, but overall, it’s a pretty concise look at how far the three-piece has come in their time together. Whatever faux-authenticity might come from listening to a bona fide demo tape in this day and age, Demos & Live (2007-2010) is legitimately a cool release, and I was glad to have picked it up.

I’ve got more digging into the two Ice Dragon tapes (both of which are also streaming on their Bandcamp) — and wanting to do that was a big part of why I finally caved and brought the tape player into the office — but on a cursory listen, they sound righteous in their lo-fi classicism, The Sorrowful Sun being more melodically developed than its self-titled predecessor. Both feel caked in blown-out-cone distortion and are pretty well suited to the format. I was glad to get them out of the car so they wouldn’t get any further warped by the heat. From what I’ve heard so far, they’re plenty warped on their own.

And while I get to know them better, I’ve got the joy of staring at the spines on my desk:

Even for $35, I could do much worse than that. Just for kicks, here’s the stream of Ice Dragon‘s Dream Dragon, which inspired all this silliness: