The 2009 Tilburg haul, that is, the batch of CDs I bought while at the 2009 Roadburn festival, was unquestionably the year’s best. Nothing else even came close, and though I didn’t get nearly as many records this year, I think I may have trumped it in a quality-over-quantity kind of way. Time will tell on that one, but in the meantime, killer discs were purchased by Comus, We, Pentagram and more, and I think the dude working the table where they were selling the Roadburn/Burning World Records merch remembered me from last year’s fest. I had a little laugh.

Here’s the list, with notes where necessary:

Anathema, Alternative 4 (digipak version)
Black Shape of Nexus, Black Shape of Nexus (metal tin)
Comus, Song to Comus: The Complete Collection (signed by band)
Fu Manchu, No One Rides for Free (the reissue)
Gomer Pyle, Idiots Savants
Horisont, Tva Sidor av Horisonten (tight-pants Swedish retro rock; meh)
The Machine, Shadow of the Machine
The Machine, Solar Corona (man this band sounds like Colour Haze)
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem One
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem Two
Pentagram, Sub-Basement
Pentagram, Show ’em How
Red Sparowes, The Fear is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer
Solitude Aeturnus, Adagio (rules; catalog now complete)
Spiritual Beggars, Mantra III (2007 reissue)
Temples, Temples (On the Radar here)
Totimoshi, Untitled (a demo with three new songs)
The Desert Sessions, Volume 3 & 4 (life is good)
VA, Welcome Back to MeteorCity
We, Livin’ the Lore
White Darkness, Nothing (given to me for free because it’s on Roadburn/Burning World and I’d spent a bunch of money)
Witchfynde, Play it to Death

Some of it I bought just to own. Like Black Shape of Nexus. I got their other full-length last year and listened to it all of once, but figured I’d keep tradition alive by buying this one and probably not listening to it. Plus it was in a metal tin. And yeah, that’s my third copy of that Anathema record, but fuck it. I’m looking forward to getting to know many of these albums — Temples, Fu Manchu‘s first (I’d been holding out for the original but couldn’t find it, so finally acquiesced to the reissue), Comus — and with The Desert Sessions and those Spiritual Beggars and Solitude Aeturnus discs, I managed to find some stuff I’ve had an eye on for years. Good times all around. Mark it eight, Dude.

Clutch‘s Live at the 9:30 double-DVD is due out May 11. As per the PR wire, here’s the trailer and preorder info:

The official presale for Live at the 9:30 kicks off today at Indiemerch.com. The dual disc DVD from Maryland‘s most beloved rock band Clutch features both a 90-minute concert performance, as well as a two-hour road movie with rare footage and plenty of insight to the band’s storied 20 year history. Fans ordering the Agent Ogden produced DVD through Indiemerch.com between today’s date of 4/23 and the retail date of 5/11, will receive a 24″ Clutch logo sticker, autographed by all four Clutch band members: vocalist Neil Fallon, guitarist Tim Sult, bassist Dan Maines and drummer Jean Paul Gaster.

Norwegian legends Darkthrone and I have something in common: We both couldn’t give less of a fuck about the legacy of black metal. Though with earlier albums like Transilvanian Hunger and A Blaze in the Northern Sky, they helped shape that the genre would become in the ‘90s and beyond, the duo of vocalist/guitarist/bassist Nocturno Culto and drummer/vocalist Fenriz have morphed into an oldschool punk/metal wrecking crew, giving nods to Trouble and obscure/classic ‘80s speed metallers along the way.

Their oppositional stance to press, playing live and (occasionally) their own fans has made Darkthrone a pariah in the world of underground metal, and I doubt very much they’d have it any other way. As on their more recent albums, F.O.A.D. (2007) and Dark Thrones and Black Flags (2008), the latest, Circle the Wagons (Peaceville), was composed half by Fenriz and half by Nocturno Culto, and contains the barebones stuff of heavy metal hunger. Imagine being in a band for 23 years and still sounding as ravenous as though you were just releasing your first demo.

What’s most striking about Circle the Wagons opener “Those Treasures Will Never Befall You” is how produced it is. Of course, it’s all relative, but compared to Dark Thrones and Black Flags and F.O.A.D., which basically sounded as live and lo-fi as you can get, Circle the Wagons starts off sounding polished. I chalk it up to the added experience the band has recording themselves and maybe some new equipment at Necrohell Studios, where they make all their albums. Nonetheless, the song — a Fenriz composition — feels like the duo are starting to develop within this still basically new stage of their career, beginning to evolve within their punk/metal sound. The vocals are a little more complex in their arrangement, and on the whole it comes off as less reckless than some of their output in the last few years. It’s an interesting development.

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Yeah, sure, Torche have just launched on a month-long US tour — nothing really new there — and I guess Hydra Head is going to issue the split they did with Boris, but the below info from the PR wire (oh, PR wire, how I missed you) also subtly drops the news that the band just finished a new recording. Doesn’t say of what sort, EP, LP or other, but whatever Torche has got that’s new is fine by me. Check it out:

Kicking off this week, Miami‘s Torche will head out on a month-long US tour supporting Coheed and Cambria and Circa Survive. The tour will span both coasts, travel throughout the Midwest, and head to select cities in the Great White North.

In addition, Torche and Hydra Head have announced the band’s new split release with Boris, Chapter Ahead Being Fake, which will see the light of day on June 29th on 10″ vinyl.

And since teasing is our sort of our thing, the band just finished self-recording their next batch of hits for release late August 2010… but we’ll tell you more about that later…

Torche live w/ Coheed and Cambria and Circa Survive:
04/22/10 Charlotte, NC. @ The Fillmore Charlotte
04/23/10 Atlanta, GA. @ Tabernacle
04/24/10 Lake Buena Vista, FL. @ House of Blues (Orlando)
04/25/10 Lauderdale, FL. @ Revolution
04/27/10 Houston, TX. @ Warehouse Live
04/28/10 Austin, TX. @ Stubb’s BBQ
04/29/10 Dallas, TX. @ Palladium Ballroom
04/30/10 Tulsa, OK. @ Cain’s Ballroom
05/01/10 Oklahoma City, OK @ Diamond Ballroom
05/03/10 Tempe, AZ. @ Marquee Theatre
05/04/10 Pomona, CA. @ The Fox Theatre
05/05/10 San Francisco, CA. @ The Warfield
05/07/10 Portland, OR. @ Roseland Theater
05/08/10 Seattle, WA. @ Showbox SoDo
05/10/10 Murray, UT. @ Murray Theater
05/11/10 Denver, CO. @ Ogden Theatre
05/13/10 Minneapolis, MN. @ First Avenue
05/14/10 Chicago, IL. @ Congress Theatre
05/15/10 Royal Oak, MI. @ Royal Oak Music Theatre
05/17/10 Boston, MA. @ House of Blues
05/18/10 Montreal, QC. @ Metropolis
05/19/10 Toronto, ON. @ The Sound Academy
05/22/10 Philadelphia, PA. @ The Electric Factory
05/26/10 New York, NY. @ Rumsey Playfield
05/27/10 Washington, DC. @ 9:30 Club
05/28/10 Washington, DC. @ 9:30 Club
07/31/10 Chicago, IL. @ Subterranean * no Coheed or Circa Survive

Because no closing credits are complete without music, please press play on the below before you begin reading…

One last travel miracle: I had an entire row to myself on the plane yesterday. Don’t ask me how it happened, but I was more than happy to lay across three seats and sleep for most of the flight. Fantastic.

Now that the Euroventure has ended, I’m back in my valley and have slept a solid 13 hours, I want to express a quick thanks to everyone who helped make the trip what it became. If you’ll indulge:

Walter Roadburn: For the hospitality and for doing something no one else in the world has been able to accomplish with his festival.

Chris and Pete from Trippy Wicked and the Cosmic Children of the Knight: Also for the hospitality and for being willing to take me in for several days and show me a good time in St Albans. Next time I might have to get stuck in the UK on purpose.

The Patient Mrs.: For her constant help from home in finding transport and lodgings. I wouldn’t even have been able to get on the bus to Heathrow if she hadn’t told me the schedule.

You: For reading. I say it all the time, but this stuff can’t happen if you guys don’t keep showing up, so thank you for presenting me with the opportunity.

Eyjafjallajökull: For erupting. It may have made me miss Goatsnake — and for that I’ll never forgive it — but I couldn’t have had the amazing time I did if not for the circumstances of the trip, which were largely brought about by this volcano, so I gotta say thanks.

There are others. My family, Pete Tsakiris, Louise Brown, John Garcia (if for no other reason than because he included “El Rodeo” in the Garcia Plays Kyuss set), but in an attempt to restore what usually passes for normalcy around here, I’ll keep it short. Thanks again to everyone who made it what it was, and thanks again to you for reading and commenting.

5:37AM: Bus en route from St Albans to Heathrow Terminal 5: It is getting lighter by the minute, but the tips of my fingers are still numb from standing out in the cold waiting for this bus. When I think of the jacket I didn’t buy yesterday, well, I don’t know, because it’s too fucking early to think.

Accordingly, you’d have to figure I must have gotten an early flight out for this morning, right? There’s only two things that would have me choose to wake up at the ungodly hour I did, and if there’d been a fire, I wouldn’t have time to stop and write about it. So yes, I’m going home.

After so successfully buying records in Camden, I cabbed it back to St Pancras rail station and took the train up to St Albans to meet Chris from Trippy Wicked, who as you’ll recall graciously offered to put me up for the rest of my stay here. I felt like a goon taking him up on it, but he and Pete from the band with whom he lives, turned out to be really cool, chill guys. This was a relief, and I honestly think a few days’ time hanging out there, going to a few pubs, seeing the sights, etc., would have been really nice, but when I called British Airways as I’d been instructed to upon booking my Monday flight, the guy told me he could get me on a plane this morning and I had to take it. What if there was another eruption in the meantime? Given the money it’s been costing me to be here, spent on records and otherwise, I had no choice.

If that sounds like I’m justifying a bit, maybe I am. After seeing the town center of St Albans, it looked like a decent place to spend a few days, and since upon my arrival Chris Wicked and I basically just shot the shit about music for two hours, I knew that getting along wasn’t going to be an issue. Their place was nice and the couch was comfortable (I did wind up sleeping on it for just a few hours), but I had to go.

They played an acoustic show in Reading hosted by Laz from Obiat last night that was a great time that I’ll write about when I’ve got my wits closer to somewhere about my person, and when we got back to St Albans, Chris and I walked down to London St. so he could show me where to the bus. It’s a good thing he did, because I’d have never figured it out on my own and I’d still be standing back there in the cold like an ass. Cold ass.

So there you have it. I almost can’t believe it, but I’m on my way home to my valley, my Patient Mrs. and – perhaps most immediately prevalent because of the circumstances under which I’m writing – my bed. I’m astounded by how lucky, all things considered, I’ve been on this trip, from the open space on the ferry to Hoek van Holland to get me to Roadburn to the CDs I found to the hospitality of Chris and Pete and making it onto this flight, it’s been a turbulent, but also really gratifying trip. I’m looking forward to looking back on it.

Truth be told, I wasn’t exactly fiending for a record shopping excursion after Roadburn (the Tilburg haul I’ll post at another time), but I’d have kicked myself in the ass upon my return home if I didn’t at least visit one shop in London while I was staying there, so I hopped in a cab and took it up to Camden High Street in to check out Resurrection Records, which everything I’d read about said it specialized in “gothic, industrial and metal.”

Now, I put that in quotes because of the word order. Somehow I had the feeling there was going to be way more of the former two than the latter one, and when I got there and went downstairs into the shop, that did turn out to be the case, but the metal section was still bigger than what you find in most mainstream CD stores. And by that I mean it existed. I managed to grab Reverend Bizarre‘s In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend (because I haven’t yet convinced myself I just don’t like the band), the 1999 reissue of Celtic Frost‘s rare tracks comp., Parched with Thirst am I and Dying, and Cathedral‘s In Memoriam.

Not bad finds — the Cathedral I’ve been chasing for a while and you don’t see that Reverend Bizarre around much, so whatever. I was reasonably satisfied. I went to grab lunch and check my email quickly, see if there was anything else nearby I needed to do. One ham sandwich later, I discovered one of the several Music and Video Exchange shops was on the next block, so I (and my luggage, which I was trailing with me) walked down the five or 10 storefronts and there it was.

As I said, I was reasonably satisfied before, but while checking out the wares at the Music and Video Exchange, I noted there was a section apart from the heavy, extreme and contemporary (labeled “cont.” by someone who hopefully has a phonetic sense of humor) metal sections called The Pretentious Intellectual Avant Metal Section… Also Stoner Rock. And so I found my home.

They had a roughly alphabetized system of cards with the album titles — they wouldn’t have been able to fit everything otherwise — but the pickings were thick. I grabbed two separate Queens of the Stone Age promo singles, for “Burn the Witch” and “Everybody Knows that You’re Insane,” the self-titled Debris Inc. album, which I somehow let slip by when it was initially released, a Monster Magnet CD single for “Negasonic Teenage Warhead” — not their best work, but I miss New Jersey — a Japanese version of Firebird‘s Deluxe with the Obi strip, and the entire trip’s closest rival to the copy of Desert Sessions 3 & 4 I bought off Fatso Jetson, the 1997 Burn One Up compilation on Roadrunner, featuring acts like Beaver, Acrimony, Spiritual Beggars, The Heads, Sleep, Fu Manchu and others, the vast majority with previously unreleased cuts.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this compilation is considered a touchstone in the development of stoner rock because it’s one of the first times the genre acknowledged its own existence. Burn One Up regularly goes for $70 on more on Amazon and eBay, and I paid a whopping 12 pounds for it. That alone might make it find of the trip, as opposed to Desert Sessions, which cost me 25 Euro. In any case, I was fucking thrilled. Grabbed and ran like Charlie with the golden ticket. Haven’t had a second to listen to it yet, but am very much looking forward to doing so as soon as possible.

10:42PM: Back in the Hotel Room, London, England: The night before last I slept two and a half hours. Last night was more, but I was still up until 3:30AM or so. Tonight I’m finally tired. Finally fucking tired. Doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll sleep, but at least I want to.

Because the pasta place I wanted to go to was closed I had to go all the way around the corner to find dinner, and what did I see when I got there but a fantastic-looking Indian restaurant. And wouldn’t you know, when I walked in, I was greeted by a very friendly man who said, “Ah, good, Mr. Taskmaster is here. Come inside, we’ve been expecting you. We have started a lamb biryani and some garlic naan cooking for you, but while you wait, here is a wonderfully crisp Indian beer. Oh, and here are six non-inkjet/CDR Black Sabbath bootlegs for you to take with you, and here comes Ritchie Blackmore to play “Highway Star” on the lute. Just for you and just because we like you.”

Yup. That’s exactly how it went down. Definitely wasn’t me getting stared at in a dining room for 20 minutes while waiting for them to bring out my to-go order. The biryani was great though. No regrets.

It’s probably good I’m getting out of here tomorrow afternoon.

I wore my new YOB t-shirt today, and not without realizing that the word is slang in Britain for male bastard youth. At least according to the countries’ respective popular media, while the US has raised a generation rendered docile by technology, some among the younger generation of Brits are right fuckers, which is probably how it should be. Until they steal something from my ass, that is. Then fuck ’em. Toss ’em all in jail, hey?

Anyway, got some funny looks for the YOB shirt, but filed them directly next to all the other various funny looks I get, so no harm done. Might wear another YOB shirt tomorrow, actually, since I have two on me. Sooner or later I’m going to have to do some laundry. Hopefully sooner.