For some reason, of all the Entombed records I usually see used in stores, I could never find a copy of their covers collection, Sons of Satan Praise the Lord. I could have bought Monkey Puss: Live in London 35 times over for the once it took me to actually get this CD. And yeah, I could’ve just downloaded it, but screw that. It’s a collection of random tracks, not an album. Pretty much the only thing holding it together is that they’re all pressed to disc. Plus it’s more fun this way.

The Patient Mrs. and I were in some town off 287 in North Jersey. I don’t even remember what it was. Somerville, maybe, or Somerset. Definitely Somersomething. We had chased down some Mongolian BBQ for lunch and lo and behold what was across the street but a store called Sound Exchange. That being the name of a shop I frequent in Wayne, I thought it would be cool to go in, if only to find out if they were affiliated.

From the outside, it actually looked like a home-audio kind of place. Surround sound systems, speakers, hi-fis, that kind of thing. They had a couple systems up front, but the whole midsection of the store was CDs (there was also a wall of VHS/DVD behind the counter) from whence I grabbed the special VHS/CD release of the third Danzig record in the crazy H.R. Giger artwork that would never in a million years be for sale these days for anything less than $100, if it got made at all, Perfect Strangers by Deep Purple, the CD from the Cross Purposes Live set by Tony Martin-era Black Sabbath, Bill Hicks‘ Rant in E-Minor (if nothing else, now I know where Denis Leary got his whole act from), and Sons of Satan Praise the Lord.

Somehow it’s so typical of Entombed not to just do a covers record, but to, over the course of their entire career, amass enough of them to make a double-disc release. The compilation came out on the band’s own Threeman Recordings/Music for Nations in 2002, and from Alice Cooper to Repulsion to S.O.D., it’s probably the best and most direct look at their influences you can get. There are a few clunkers (“21st Century Schizoid Man” seems to be more in tribute to Voivod‘s version of the song than King Crimson‘s, though I give credit for doing the chase part, and “Amazing Grace” is… included) but the reworkings of Roky Erikson‘s “Night of the Vampire,” Bob Dylan‘s “The Ballad of Hollis Brown” and the thrashing “Sergeant D. and the S.O.D.” more than make up for any missteps.

On the whole, I doubt it’s something I’m going to listen to every day, but whatever, it’s a cool collection, and honestly, having the disc(s) is half the point. I could have downloaded these tracks or found them on YouTube or somewhere else, but the experience of going to the store — in this case, one I’d never even been to before and just completely happened on (and not affiliated with the other store of the same name) — makes it. After getting ripped off on that Kyuss bootleg on eBay, it was cool to have some reinforcement that it’s still worth seeing out physical media. L-G Petrov singing KISS‘ “God of Thunder” is all the triumph I need.

It had been my intention to spend yesterday (Sunday) making the November podcast using the suggested Southern theme, but two things kept me from meeting that goal. First was homework, which can’t be helped. Second, and more pivotal, was the fact that I don’t yet own a physical copy of Spiral Shadow by Kylesa.

Fucking tragedy, right?

I tried to remedy this first at Sound Exchange in Wayne, my go-to shop for its proximity to my humble river valley and for the fact that if it’s between them and almost anyone else in the physical realm, I’d rather give them the money. They were a no dice. Thus began the agonizing, drawn-out process of not wanting to drive to Vintage Vinyl in Fords — an hour away on a good day — and knowing that I had zero chance of finding Spiral Shadow anywhere else near me.

My ride to Vintage Vinyl is agony, and not just because I have to spend the whole time anticipating what treasures I might find when I get there. It includes some of Northern New Jersey‘s most cripplingly boring roads, including Rt. 24, Rt. 78 and the ludicrously engineered Garden State Parkway. Nonetheless, at about four o’clock yesterday afternoon, after whining for nearly two hours about how much I didn’t want to make the trip — and no, it’s not lost on me that that’s long enough to make the trip twice over — off I went.

Should’ve called first. They didn’t have it. They’d only gotten a few copies and those were gone. Boy, did I feel stupid. Who does that? Who spends two hours in a car at the prospect of buying a CD without calling first to make sure the store has it?

I drowned my jackass sorrows in picking up The Elf Albums by Ronnie James Dio (and the rest of Elf, who aren’t cool enough to get mentioned on the cover), a used copy of Celestial Hi-Fi by Sheavy, who I never particularly enjoy hearing but keep buying the records of when I see them, Hippie Killer by Bongripper for $6.99, a used copy of the Boris and Ian Astbury collaboration, BXI, and, for $3.99, the version of Entombed‘s Wolverine Blues with the (apparently not) titular Marvel Comics character on the front.

The latter was obviously the find of the trip, but even that wasn’t enough to make me feel like any less of an idiot for spending that much of my day in blind pursuit of Spiral Shadow, which, it should be noted, I still haven’t gotten and is now holding up the November podcast. I don’t own Black Tusk either, but there are enough bands around who sound just like them that I can let that go. The Kylesa I pretty much need. The dude behind the counter said they’d be getting more this week, and I might try another run tomorrow, but needless to say, I’ll be calling first.

When I pulled up to the Championship Bar and Grill in Trenton, the street outside was taped off and cop cars had their lights flashing. The whole trip down, I had been feeling and saying, “There’s no way this show’s going to happen,” and that seemed to confirm it. But no. Someone got hit by a car, probably killed. The show must go on.

Trenton, for anyone who might not be aware, is the capital of my beloved New Jersey and an utter shithole. Not as bad as Camden, but probably on the level of Paterson, where corrupt officials have raped the budgets that might otherwise help these working class people not live in fear of gang violence or police violence or drugs or whatever else I wouldn’t know about because of my pampered northern existence. Not a nice place even to drive through in most neighborhoods. The kind of place whites send sociologists to study black people and Mexicans like they were tribes in the Amazon.

Good fun. On the bill with Swedish masters of death Entombed was a plethora of pay-to-play NJ hardcore bands. Way to go, whoever booked the show. Don’t actually put together a killer bill or anything so that people might show up and/or stick around. Jerks. I didn’t see any of the openers, got there just two beers before Entombed went on. There were maybe 35 people there.

Championship‘s changed the stage layout since last I was there, which was the smart move. Now, about four inches high, the stage resides in the corner of the room (much better than where it was), and as Entombed made ready to start up, guitarist Alex Hellid was having some trouble with equipment. He ran his guitar through four different heads into Emperor cabinets, so I’d imagine amp troubles happen not infrequently. He got it all sorted in good time though.

I was right up front. Now, when I say that, I mean it. Right. Fucking. There. L-G Petrov was about as far away from me last night as my computer monitor is now. Maybe two feet. This, however, is a boundary I respect. That’s a big two feet. The difference is between stage and audience. That’s not to be fucked with. We shook hands once or twice, headbanged together in a deathly metallic tradition, and all was well throughout their set, which was heavy as fuck and given, in no small part by the surroundings, a punk-ish feel that the band just ate up.

It’s been a while since I was at a show with any moshing, and there wasn’t much of it, but as Little Guy with Glasses decided he was gonna fuck shit up NJHC-style, I couldn’t help but be annoyed. South Jersey is a completely different animal from North Jersey. It’s the difference between New York and Philadelphia, essentially, and while I love Philly like I love no other city on this earth and would make a home there in a second if I could afford it, South Jersey has more than its fair share of human trainwrecks, some of whom listen to hardcore, and some of whom who stuck around for Entombed.

I took a swing at one big dude that went wide after being knocked over, grabbed the guy and wrestled around, getting a decent shot in his side as I did. Crowd gathered to split us up. Fucking hell. I don’t care if you mosh, but if I don’t want to be involved in it, leave me to my beer, my headbanging and the fucking show. Otherwise it’s rape. There. I said it. I was mosh-raped.

Dickheads aside (isn’t that life?), the set was fantastic. I’ll probably never have the chance again to catch Entombed in that kind of setting, in so small a venue, with so few people around, so up close and intense, that I was bound to come out on top either way. They played about a sampling of their catalog highlights — I don’t even know how long the set was, but I was out of there by midnight and I got there at 10PM — from “Left Hand Path” to “Chief Rebel Angel” and closing with “When in Sodom.” No encore, but a great time. I hope they got paid well, or, since it’s Jersey, at all.

Obviously I have no idea how Entombed felt about playing such a minuscule show after the Maryland Deathfest, whether they were into it or not — I would think it would be kind of a letdown, but who knows — but I certainly enjoyed it. Seeing them easily justified the total three-hours road time, and even with the douche-factor, it’s a definite win. Quite a way to kick off the summer.

The better part of the underground metal community has it that Swedish death metal legends Entombed didn’t exist from about 1996 until 2001. Of course, they released three full-lengths, two EPs, and a live record/VHS in that time, but because the chief creators of the Sunlight Studios sound that also permeated the early work of Grave and Viking metal overlords Unleashed were straying from the raw death they’d propogated in their younger days as Nihilist and on the Entombed 1990 debut, Left Hand Path, they sucked. “Entombed? Ah they suck now,” and so forth.

I humbly disagree.

Like many of my generation, I was first exposed to Entombed by seeing advertisements in Marvel comic books for the marketing debacle that was 1993’s Wolverine Blues. It wasn’t until much later that I came to find an affection for the various career stages in their catalog, but even then, the term “death ‘n roll” wasn’t around to casually explain away their approach. No one really knew what the fuck was going on.

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