The alarm went off three times this morning. Each one was more painful than the last. Even as I type this, I’m still burping last night’s wine. So of course, when it came time to pick a track for this week’s Wino Wednesday, “Dying Inside” by Saint Vitus was an obvious pick. The song’s a little more tragic than I feel about it — I got my standard greasy breakfast sandwich, took some ibuprofen, drank some coffee and the recovery is well under way — but I wasn’t far off from “I have ruined my soul” when I hit snooze for the second time.

This footage was filmed in 2010 in Hamburg, and I’ve posted other clips from the same show before, because they kick ass and because they’re pro shot. “Dying Inside” comes off 1986’s ultra-classic Born too Late album and is just one of that record’s several anthems, along with the title-track and “The War Starter.” And, you know, all the rest. The lyrics make it a standout, though, written with Dave Chandler‘s classic no-bullshit ethic and delivered — in this clip and every time I’ve seen them play it — with visceral conviction by Wino.

So yeah, while I continue to get my head together and face the rest of this afternoon, please enjoy “Dying Inside” and have a happy Wino Wednesday:

Unpretentious as they are, Abbot are still the kind of band who make you want to describe everything with “thee.” Thee debut 7″ Into the Light has been released by thee label Red Sky, and finds thee Finnish four-piece rolling along classic doom grooves, etc. All of that applies to the two tracks of Into the Light, by the way. The single-guitar outfit — JP Jakonen provides standalone vocals and harmonica, Jussi Jokinen guitar, Tapio Lepistö bass and Antti Kuusinen the drums — recorded “Into the Light” and the B-side “Beyond the High Rise” in their rehearsal space in 2010, so they’ve had a little time to sit on them, and while their Oct. 2012 cassette, All and Everything (limited to 100 copies), is based around the life of Greek philosopher G. I. Gurdjieff — he of the waking sleep — Into the Light has no such abiding thematic. That leads me to think that the later release, which is the 7″, was recorded first, and the rudimentary nature of “Into the Light” and “Beyond the High Rise” bear that out.

The 7″ is limited to 300 copies on black vinyl in a cardboard sleeve, and boasts artwork by Daniel Matsui, and its opener is the longer of the two pieces at just under six and a half minutes. Immediately the riff leads the way. Jokinen‘s guitar is the guiding force throughout the entirety of Into the Light, and the rest of Abbot follows the course he sets with the riffs. Even Jakonen’s vocals align themselves to the guitar’s patterns, working in subtly doomed melodies not so far from the spirit once conjured by Reverend Bizarre but neither totally attached to it. “Into the Light” works at a slow march, enough so there’s movement within it, lumbering though it may be, but still in no general rush. Kuusinen‘s drums keep the plod pretty simple as well, moving from the bell to hard-hit fills that call out transitions between the verse and the chorus movement. The hook of the song is largely in the riff, but that’s enough to carry it across anyway, since the ideas are fairly simple, and the harmonica that appears to donate a solo to a (relatively) shuffling blues jam bridge provides a shift just where one is most needed before the verse resumes prior to the four-minute mark. A long outro movement has Jakonen experimenting with vocal effects over suitably stoned guitars for a semi-psychedelic feel, and though one feels as though Abbot could probably get another six or seven minutes out of that riff — nothing seems to be preventing them from doing exactly that, save perhaps for the limited capacity of the 7″ record — “Into the Light” comes to an abrupt end with as little ceremony as it arrived.

Beginning with a jarring tape noise and a quicker, more immediate stoner bounce, “Beyond the High Rise” is catchier than the A-side and so makes a formidable complement. The natural, Sabbathian vibe of the preceding cut is retained, and Jokinen‘s guitar is still definitely running the show, but the band as a whole seems more comfortable in the uptempo context, and they move deftly from the harmonica at the beginning to the swirling “lead” in the second half without any upset of flow or sacrifice of structure. There’s a mini-build about three quarters of the way through the total four-minutes, of which Jakonen‘s harmonica is a charming part, and though “Beyond the High Rise” ultimately shares “Into the Light”‘s lack of flourish arrangement-wise, it also shares its engaging riffs, thick tones, organic vibe and — considering it was recorded in a rehearsal space — surprisingly solid production. Into the Light may prove a one-off for Abbot, considering the concurrent tape is reportedly one of a series of cassingles, but the songs prove their worth no matter how representative they either do or don’t wind up being of where Abbot are headed conceptually and stylistically. Either way, Into the Light, as a first physical manifestation of Abbot‘s output, goes to show that Pori, which also produced experimentalist improvisers Pharaoh Overlord, might not be done contributing to the heavy underground yet. Fair enough. Both “Beyond the High Rise” and “Into the Light” show an affinity for the landmarks of doom and a desire to make their own stamp on the sound. For a debut release, that’s about all one can ask.

Abbot at Bandcamp

Abbot’s website

Hard to believe we’re at this point already, but it’s December, so it’s time to find out what were the best albums of the year. Any genre, any band, any album. So long as it came out in 2012, it’s fair game.The last 12 months were full of intensely fascinating releases, and I’ve been really looking forward to seeing what people choose.

The idea is basically the same as last year. Everyone submits their picks over the course of this month, and then once 2013 hits, we’ll unveil the master list of what got the most votes. You can submit up to 12 albums, and from that, a list of 20 will be compiled using a complex mathematical formula known as “counting.” At least I think that’s how it’s spelled.

Fill out your picks in the form below, click submit and we’re off and running:

[THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO PARTICIPATED!]

Once again, special thanks to Slevin for setting up the database and making this whole thing work behind the scenes. History will sing songs of his generosity and technical cunning.

Their third new studio album since getting back together as Revelation and issuing 2008’s Release on Leaf Hound, Inner Harbor is an album that bleeds authenticity. After a while and the work that the Baltimore trio of John Brenner (guitar/vocals), Bert Hall, Jr. (bass) and Steve Branagan (drums) have also done as the concurrent act Against Nature, one almost comes to expect a level of musical humanity in the sound, but Inner Harbor (review here) takes the unpretentious progressive elements in Revelation‘s approach and pushes them further, evoking the melancholy in which they’ve always trafficked without sounding like a put-on or over-the-top in any sense that might apply.

Yet I wouldn’t call Inner Harbor reserved. In the interview that follows, Brenner talks about the process of paring down the six tracks to fit them on the LP version of the album (released by Pariah Child Records, as opposed to the CD on Shadow Kingdom or the free download available through the band’s own Bland Hand imprint), and it seems like a process involving little if any restraint, resulting in an album that went from 60 minutes to 35. Tracks like “Jones Falls” and “Terribilita” aren’t likely to overwhelm with a sonic assault, but both convey effectively the raw emotional aspect that’s at the heart of classic doom.

Because Revelation are a constantly evolving process, however,that emotionality comes with some stylistic shifts that anyone who heard either Release or 2009’s follow-up, For the Sake of No One (or the earlier records, for that matter), could be easily surprised by — most notably the extensive incorporation of progressive synth alongside the guitar, bass and drums. Revelation have never been about expansive arrangements or overly indulgent explorations, instead finding effective conveyance through relatively simple, traditional means and tones, but on a song like the closing “An Allegory of Want” or “Rebecca at the Well,” they’re showing more of a classic prog influence — i.e. Rush — and making it work within the context of their long-since-proven ability for songcraft.

The changes might not be so devastating for anyone who’s followed Revelation since they got back or Branagan, Hall and Brenner‘s work in Against Nature, but the Rush influence was something I specifically wanted to explore in the back and forth with Brenner, along with the evolution of their self-recording process and the differences that have emerged between Against Nature and Revelation over the last few years. Brenner, an admitted introvert but no less sincere in his answers than he is in the music he writes, was especially poignant in discussing the meaning behind the title Inner Harbor, and how important the interpretations of individual words is to him both in the band and in general.

And maybe those parts are specifically worth a look, but honestly, the whole thing makes for a good read. You’ll find the complete 5,500-word Q&A after the jump.

Please enjoy:

Read more »

I’ve got 300 of these bad boys on their way from Skillit, and whatever else I do with them, I know they’ll be included with pre-orders of the Clamfight CD. More info about that next week, but until then, check out the sticker design, once again courtesy of Skillit — who if I haven’t said it enough times by now — is the fucking man:

Kudos to British doomly upstarts Undersmile and to Serpent Venom as well. Both bands were announced as additions to the Hammerfest set to take place next year in North Wales. To put that to scale, Saint Vitus and Killing Joke have also been tapped for the Metal Hammer-sponsored event, and the likes of Candlemass and Enslaved were already on the bill, so, you know, not exactly small potatoes.

Future Noise Booking sent notice down the PR wire of good stuff happening to good bands:

We’re ecstatic to announce that Undersmile & Serpent Venom, 2 bands which feature on Future Noise booking roster, have been added to Hammerfest 2013 which takes place at Haven Hafan y Môr Holiday Park, Pwllheli, Gwynedd, North Wales on the weekend of the 14th/15th/16th March 2013.

The recent announcement also included confirmation of Killing Joke to headline the Friday while Doom legends Saint Vitus were also confirmed to play.

Hammerfest talent booker Seven Webster says…
“To have both Killing Joke and Saint Vitus join our bill is a personal career highlight for me, as I have followed Killing Joke since their inception, and they have never failed to impress To also have Saint Vitus play Hammerfest, who are an act we have always wanted to have grace the stage the cake on what I believe is one of our best line-ups to date.”

With only 47 rooms left at the time the original announcement was made, we suggest you get your tickets now, more info and the full line up can be found at www.hammerfest.co.uk or you can call the ticket hotline on 08700 110034.

I used to play in a band called Maegashira here in Jersey. Well, not really play, I was the singer, and a standalone singer at that in a four-piece, which since I couldn’t really sing and never learned to play anything made me a lyricist and the next best thing to useless. The other three dudes played guitar, bass and drums. I just kind of stumbled this way and that on stage, got drunk and obnoxious, yelled and embarrassed myself. Most nights we were good, on a couple more than that. I was never a deciding factor toward the positive.

It’ll be two years next month that ended. We played our last show Dec. 10, 2010, which is a date I remember specifically because I reviewed the show – at the Cake Shop in Manhattan; The Brought Low, Kings Destroy and Alkahest also played – otherwise the exact day probably would’ve been relegated to the humid swamp of my memory. I’d be lucky to know the year. Part of writing for me has always been the simple act of documentation.

Anyway, in our time, the four of us put out one full-length, which was called The Stark Arctic, named for a phrase I heard my mother-in-law say. Looking back on it now, the album was too long by at least 10 minutes, but it’s hard to know that kind of thing when you’re hooked into making it. I blew my throat out to record those songs, more than once. Drove to Little Silver from work in the city to get the tracks down with Lou Gorra from Halfway to Gone, who was a patient engineer. You’re damn right they’re all going in. There were a couple other splits and demos as well, but the album was a highlight. One of the songs had the line “It will never be like this again,” because part of me knew that was true.

We fizzled the way a lot of bands fizzled. The novelty faded and when emptiness persisted at our shows, the record got little reaction and the second batch of tracks for the next album – which everyone but me recorded live in Lansing, MI (I was sick and did vocals later) – weren’t as good, it was easier to hang it up than keep going. I’d have probably kept on it for the sake of the songs alone, which I loved, but the shows were less and less fun, we knew by then that there was no way we would be able to tour, and one week I saw on Facebook that one of the guys wanted to end it and then we did. Once you get to a certain point, being in a band is like death – there’s nothing you can say about it that isn’t a cliché.

At the end of that Cake Shop show, I was intoxicated enough on four-dollar Newcastles to hug our bassist and apologize for being a dick in general, specifically for being a miserable drunk on the several occasions I was. I went home and puked my guts out. There’s probably a metaphor for purging in there somewhere, but really I’d just succumbed to Newcastular temptations for not the first or last time. The next day was as turbulent gastro-intestinally as the next few months would be emotionally.

You get used to processes. I was used to group creation, and scared to lose that as a part of my weekly routine if not my daily thought pattern. Scared to not hear the “new riff” in my head anymore. I had another band I’d been practicing with for a while, but ultimately it would turn out I’d be with them 18 months and never do a show – the one opportunity we had, the last show before a member was moving to Virginia, a basement gig, was the day of a freak October snowstorm in Jersey last year – and another project never took off. Finally I joined Moth Eater on vocals.

They were more metal than I was used to, but as I’d always been a better screamer than a singer – though I chided myself for giving into the easy option vocally, like I wasn’t living up to an artistic drive to be constantly facing some imagined challenge – it made sense and worked. They were out on Long Island, though, which was a hike and made practices infrequent. There were other issues on my end as well. When my second job went from a no-show-do-something-periodically type of deal to the everyday concern it continues to be, suddenly the hour and a half each way on a Saturday afternoon was spoken for, if not for work itself than for the other real-life concerns that work pushed to the side. It was a milquetoast email, but I more or less told Moth Eater if they wanted to get someone else in, that was alright.

I’d never done a show with them either, though we took pictures. The last time I was on a stage was at SHoD in Maryland in 2011, singing for Mynoch, a short-lived band with Ken-E Bones of Negative Reaction, Andrew Riotto of Agnosis and Joe Wood of Borgo Pass, who’d also been the drummer in Maegashira for the last several years of our run. It was more or less a disaster. We’d only practiced twice because of the distance factor – those guys were even farther out on Long Island than Moth Eater – and it showed. One of the songs we fucked up so bad that we played it twice. I knew pretty much immediately that it wasn’t something that was going to happen again.

But that was last year and Moth Eater continued well into 2012. I don’t know if those guys are going to get another singer – I hope they do, as they were killer and I liked the songs they were writing – but what it rounds out to is the last couple months have been the first time in over a decade that I haven’t been in a band.

A few months ago, I was talking about that with stellar human beings Chris Jones and Lew Hambley, over a barbecue dinner on a deck. The two of them, who are collectively known as the garage thrash duo Rukut and with whom I’ve done numerous gigs over the years and whose work I continue to admire, seemed more than fairly astonished when I told them I didn’t miss it. “What do I want to be in a band with three other smelly dudes who can’t agree on anything?” I asked. “Like having three girlfriends, all a pain in the ass. Fuck it.”

I should clarify that. I’m not without my positive memories of every band in which I’ve ever played a role. In Maegashira, I made friendships that I’m happy to sustain to this very day, Rukut among them. Clamfight, whose CD I’m putting out in a couple months, are another. There are people who know me as JJ Maegashira, and I’m fine with that. We had more than a few good times, and I won’t deny that even as things got less pleasant toward the end. But I don’t miss it.

And I think that’s actually what’s surprised me most of all. In life, you go through these identities. You’re a kid, then you’re a student, then you’re working, you’re this person here, that person there, always the core of you, but here and there different pieces emerge. I was from The Aquarian, then I was from Metal Maniacs, then I was from Rutgers graduate program – less a critic and more a writer – now I’m from The Obelisk and The Aquarian again – all but entirely the opposite – from this band, that band, you’d know me from here, not from there, so that’s how I’ll introduce myself. But as I’ve given up that identity, sacrificed those good times for lack of frustrations, I can’t honestly say it’s a decision I regret. Maybe it was just time.

There’s bound to be a piece of me that misses it, but I don’t long for it anymore, and I did when Maegashira first ended. I was in a panic. I’m not scared now not to have it. Part of that is due to this site, which occupies a good portion of my waking hours, and part of it is work, which takes up most of the rest, but for someone of such ample physical proportion, I’ve managed to spread myself figuratively thin enough that I wouldn’t really have space for being in a band if I wanted to. Watching Clamfight last week, I thought about it, thought about getting on a stage and doing that again, and I felt the same way watching Ichabod – with whom I did a weekender tour once – at this year’s SHoD. But there’s a difference between relating to the process and involving oneself in it. I’m not there and I don’t know that I ever will be again.

A few reasons for that, but foremost among them is I wasn’t that good. I already said I couldn’t really sing, and how long am I supposed to not feel like a fool standing up there screaming and growling words that I’d rather express some other way? I’ve always been just smart enough to know how dumb I am, and that self-consciousness that makes me go back and read my sentences over again (sometimes) is the same one that always seemed to stand between me and letting my voice really go where I wanted it to. I was always a better writer anyway.

So that’s what I do. People treat you differently when you’re in a band and you’re not. Someone I knew from that end of things will ask me if I’ve got anything going musically and when I say I don’t and I’m writing instead, doing this, they’ll give me a kind of pitying “aw.” An automatic response, without even thinking about it. Truth is, I wrote before I took part in any kind of music. I wrote before I wrote about music. If the law of averages says anything, I’ll probably die in front of a keyboard. But it’s not the same, and I’d be a fool not to admit that. The difference between someone who does and someone who describes is always there — even if I’m contented in what I do, which I have to admit I am as much as I’ve ever been.

But the question isn’t being judged one way or another. If I cared so much about that, I’d shave, cut my hair and jog compulsively (all of which part of me wants to do all the time; these things are never as clear-cut as we present them in type), but I don’t do any of that, and I’m not desperately trolling Craigslist looking for “lazy hack doom singer wanted, tour immediately,” so I must not want that that badly either. I’ve lived through enough contradictions to know better than to say definitively I’ll never be in another band, but right now, at 31 years old, I feel like my time is better spent the way I’m spending it, rather than spinning my wheels to get ready for the next shitty show, the next faraway practice, the next argument, passive aggressive barb, and so on.

Yeah, there’s something sad about that realization. That’s what life is. You miss things when they’re gone, people when they’re gone. If I don’t make the most of what I have to work with and what I feel I’m best suited to work with, then how am I not just cheating myself, distracting myself from whatever sense of purpose I might be able to glean from anything, ever, be it writing, performing or any other sort of toil or expression in which I might be involved? I’ve got my good memories and my bad memories, but more importantly, I’ve got the lessons I’ve learned and hopefully what I’ll be able to continue to do is use those lessons to help define who I am as a person, my responses to the world around me and the point of view from which I see it, the ears with which I hear it. In that way, whatever identity I might inhabit in this moment, I haven’t lost anything at all.

The self-titled full-length debut from Virginian experimentalists Human Services is dense with Neurosis-style atmosphere and tonal crush, moments of effects-driven spoken word leading to grinding, bleak freakouts — bleakouts! — as the four-piece run a malevolent course through the July release. Later, with “Messmas” and the two-part “Demixmas,” the avant garde will take hold, semi-tribal rhythms and Book of Knots-style bang and clang serving as precursor to the garage violence of closer “A Lust Song,” but that’s hardly the beginning of how Human Services‘ Human Services catches the listener off guard.

You can see above the outside of the envelope  that houses the CD version of the album, which is available in a limited edition through the Human Services Bandcamp page. It is a handmade, numbered edition — I got #3 — put together by guitarist Jeff Liscombe (ex-Igon), and it adds greatly to the bizarre ambience of “Failsafe” or the darkened quirk of “Squirrel Cage,” giving a sense of premeditation to the record’s unhinged sprawl and nasty underlying weirdness.

On back, a QR code takes you to a page on their website with a stream of the album, video and a list of potential side-effects, but even keeping to the record itself, the look of it feeds remarkably well into what the band is doing musically. Open it up and you’ll see the following:

The disc is held in a plain white sleeve — not out of context with the rest of the package — and on the right is a foldout liner that opens to what looks like a scene of czarist oppression — or maybe its the czars being oppressed, kind of hard to tell.

It’s not until you flip that over that you see the tracklisting for the album itself, which is set over a nature scene of waterfalls and mountains behind.

If the idea is to juxtapose the cruelties of man with the power of nature, that would certainly complement some of the ideas present in Human Services‘ music as well — the band being comprised of Liscombe alongside Sean Sanford, Donnie Ballgame and Billy Kurilko — but they don’t go so far as to say explicitly whether or not that’s the intent, instead reveling in the obscurity and holding mystique in high regard as part of their process.

Human Services have already followed Human Services with a swamp-bluesy digital single called “Down to Your Last Goat,” but the album is still available to pick up, the limited package also including a t-shirt and stickers. More details can be found at their Bandcamp, from which the following stream also comes: