So here’s the thing. I really like the current Wino Wednesday banner — don’t get me wrong — but it’s been more than a year now and I’m thinking it might be time to change it up. It just so happens I saw Saint Vitus at the Saint Vitus bar last week, and managed to get a couple decent pictures out of it.

But I can’t really decide which one of them I should use to make a new banner. If you’ve got an opinion on the matter, leave a comment. I’d love to hear it.

Here are the current candidates:

1. The Crazy-Eyes Angry Wino

2. Farther Back Shouting

3. The Nostril Shot

4. A Less Angry Closeup

5. Fuzzy Contemplative Wino

They’ve each kind of got their own appeal and space for a logo, so yeah, if anyone wants to chime in, I’m way open to suggestions. Thanks as always.

While you’re thinking about it, here’s 23 minutes of HD footage from last week’s Vitus show, courtesy of UnartigNYC. Clip includes “Dying Inside,” “Saint Vitus,” “War is Our Destiny,” “The Bleeding Ground” and “White Stallions.”

Happy Wino Wednesday:

It only happened once, in 1994, on the first Nativity in Black tribute to Black Sabbath. At the time, The Obsessed was signed to Columbia, owned by Sony, who released the tribute, and Wino came together in a one-shot recording project with Rob Halford (fresh off Fight‘s War of Words) and the original Sabbath rhythm section of bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Bill Ward called Bullring Brummies. Yeah, sure, there were guitarist Brian Tilse (Fight) and Jimmy Wood on harmonica too, but seriously, Wino, Rob Halford, Geezer and Bill Ward? Covering Sabbath? I was amazed to find out it hadn’t been a Wino Wednesday pick before.

No matter, though, because it is now. That tribute also had C.O.C. (another Columbia band back then — amazing coincidence) covering “Lord of this World” and Type O Negative doing “Black Sabbath” with the original lyrics as opposed to their “From the Satanic Perspective” version. I don’t know if that necessarily makes it worth taking off the shelf, but if you haven’t heard any of it in a while, at least the “The Wizard” cover is worth another look. And in case you haven’t done the math on the timeframe there, 1994 was 18 years ago. Enjoy feeling old. I know I do.

I guess an album from Bullring Brummies probably would’ve been too much to ask for, but it’s nice to think on what might have been if they’d gone for it. One images if they’d decided to be a real band, they probably would’ve gotten a better name.

Enjoy “The Wizard” and happy Wino Wednesday:

Word came down this week of the passing of former The Obsessed vocalist Vance Bockis, who died Sept. 1 of a blood clot following rotator-cuff surgery. Bockis, 50, was a member of Pentagram, 9353, Overlord and The Factory in addition to contributing to The Obsessed, and had a long history of drug abuse, but had reportedly been clean for more than half a decade.

To honor Bockis, this week’s Wino Wednesday turns to the early days of The Obsessed. I don’t know the date of when the clip below was recorded, or much else about it than it exists, but Bockis was only in The Obsessed for a few years (1980-’83), so it’s got to be from around that time. The song “Feelings” was put to tape for the album The Obsessed recorded for Metal Blade in 1985 that was never issued, but unlike many of the tracks, never surfaced on any official subsequent releases.

Condolences to Bockis‘ family and anyone who may have known him either personally or through his work. You’ll find “Feelings” on the player below.

Please enjoy:

By the time they got around to releasing their swansong, 2007’s The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, it was becoming clear all was not well within the band. They’d toured hard in the US and Europe for 2004’s Mother Teacher Destroyer and the ensuing Devoid of Colour limited EP, and having seen a couple drummers come and go and the straining relationship between guitarist/vocalist Scott “Wino” Weinrich and bassist/vocalist Bruce Falkinburg, the band simply dissolved after the release of their third record.

They broke up despite some considerable momentum in their favor. For the stylistic shifts it represented — more progressive than the album before it, more conceptual — it was nonetheless a killer record, with Weinrich‘s signature tone a distinct factor in carrying across the songs while both he and Falkinburg showed off how tight their vocal arrangements had become. It didn’t last — three albums in five years is more than a lot of bands get to do — but their work during their time together is worthy of consideration as more than just what Wino was doing before he started the Wino band and hooked up with Shrinebuilder. Underrated, I guess is what I’m saying, and I know I’ve said it before.

“Slow Rain” closed out The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote, and so would be the final song of The Hidden Hand‘s career. At 7:20, it’s also the longest track they ever wrote, and hearing it again now, it’s a shame they couldn’t have built on what they did here for another outing. So it goes. Good band, good album, good listen. I hope you enjoy it, and hope you have (or have had, given the time of day) a happy Wino Wednesday:

Hard to believe, but this week marks the one-year anniversary of the very first Wino Wednesday post. It was a Premonition 13 video for the song “La Hechicera de la Jeringa,” and I said when I put it up that I’d probably be able to get a year’s worth of clips out of it easily, since Scott “Wino” Weinrich always had so much going on. Well, in that time, The Obsessed reunited, Wino put out a collaboration acoustic album with Conny Ochs, a Townes Van Zandt tribute with Steve Von Till and the recently-interviewed Scott Kelly, the first Saint Vitus album with him in the band in 22 years, also hitting Roadburn and Maryland Deathfest, and touring both Europe and the US. As a matter of awesome coincidence, I’m going to see him play tonight in Brooklyn.

It’s been a lot of fun bringing you these Wino Wednesday posts, and to celebrate the first birthday of this weekly landmark, I thought we’d turn to one of the most pivotal of all Saint Vitus‘ tracks: “Angry Man” from 1990’s V. Arguably it was the 2004 Southern Lord reissue of V that kicked off Vitus‘ resurgence — kind of a chicken and the egg thing there, I guess — but either way, “Angry Man” boasts one of the best Mark Adams basslines ever and the kind of stripped down Dave Chandler lyric that’s anthemic almost in spite of itself. To wit, the chorus:

All I want it to live my life
Easy and free
I don’t need
No human bullshit
Prejudice, down on me

Doesn’t get much more Vitus than that. “Angry Man” gets kind of overshadowed by the likes of “Born too Late” and the title-track of their 1984 self-titled debut, but its sensibility is among the band’s most vitriolic. Freedom through doom, doom through freedom. Fucking a right.

Happy Wino Wednesday, and here’s to the next year to come:

This week’s Wino Wednesday clip comes courtesy of one Andrew Lusby, who along with sending in a few much appreciated kind words about the site, included a link to some HD video of Wino & Conny Ochs performing their new song “Crystal Madonna” on their current US tour in support of their debut collaboration, Heavy Kingdom. His story to tell, so let’s let him tell it:

I recently saw Wino & Conny Ochs in L.A. and I was blown away. I happened to record most of their set and the quality came out pretty good. They played a new song titled “Crystal Madonna” which I think sounds great. Figured you might want to use it for a Wino Wednesday or at least enjoy for yourself. I’m guessing it will show up on the next album which Conny told me was definitely going to happen…

Besides playing most of Heavy Kingdom and some of Wino’s solo material they also played some great covers including “Hellbound Train” (Savoy Brown), “Hotel Vast Horizon” (Chris Whitley), and “Isolation” (Joy Division).

Badass. Thanks to Mr. Lusby for the clip and the info. The complete list of Wino & Conny Ochs tour dates is here.

Have a great Wino Wednesday:

Special thanks to Dutch heavy devotee Koen for sending along the below clip for this week’s Wino Wednesday inclusion. The video isn’t exactly loaded with pyrotechnics, but it is a straight line feed of the Shrinebuilder vinyl — not recorded from speakers, in other words — of Live in Europe 2010, and for the killer audio, I’m more than happy to take it. That spinning clear LP is pretty hypnotic, either way.

The song is technically more of a Scott Kelly jam — enough so that a version of the song wound up on his new Scott Kelly and the Road Home release, The Forgiven Ghost in Me (review here) — but anyone who’s heard that version and not this, perhaps because they (just a hypothetical) stubbornly refuse to start buying vinyl habitually, will be surprised at the disparity. Kelly‘s quiet croak starts out roughly the same in both versions, but as sent through Shrinebuilder — Kelly and Wino on guitar, Al Cisnernos on bass and Dale Crover on drums — it’s positively apocalyptic by the end, and a far cry from the mostly acoustic rendition.

Not a complaint. Either way you cut it, the song still has a weathered heaviness to it that’s engrossing, and with Shrinebuilder‘s mounting swirl towards the apex, it’s easy to get caught up in it. Since it made it onto Kelly‘s solo album, who knows whether “We Let the Hell Come” will show up on the next Shrinebuilder outing, or even when that will arrive, given everyone involved’s busy schedules. Nonetheless, on this Wino Wednesday, I hope you enjoy:

Check out Koen‘s YouTube channel here and prepare to kiss your afternoon goodbye.

Very subtly, it’s been a while since we last had a track by The Obsessed for a Wino Wednesday. I guess I didn’t want to overdo it after seeing them in April, but anyway, time to rectify the issue. I could find no better way to do so than this version of “Endless Circles” taken from the band’s full-length 1982 demo. I don’t know who was in the band at this point, but that certainly sounds like Wino on vocals — as opposed to former Pentagram bassist Vance Bockis, who was singing with them in this era — and even in the rawer demo quality, he’s pretty distinct. Good enough for me.

“Endless Circles” would later show up toward the end of 1991’s sophomore album, Lunar Womb — by then the band was Wino on guitar/vocals, Scott Reeder on bass and Greg Rogers on drums (they’d both later go on to join Goatsnake, and in the case of Reeder, more immediately Kyuss) — and it seems to have come later on the demo as well. While that might lead one to think it’s a deeper cut not necessarily something the band really cared about, having buried it twice, consider the nine years between the demo and Lunar Womb and that the 2012 incarnation of The Obsessed played it at this year’s Roadburn. Sometimes a song just works better toward the end of a record.

As we start to close in on a full year of this feature, enjoy this obscure gem from the still-vast catalog, and as always, have a happy Wino Wednesday: