Here we go again....

Welcome back and my apologies for the delay.This was originally supposed to be part of the Skaven post but I had not heard back from these guys with the go ahead to put this stuff up. I never did hear anything but since I already uploaded it, here it is.
Stormcrow are an active Oakland Stenchcore/Crust band. They have a style that is similar but a little bit more straight forward than Skaven. They rock just the same, it's just that their singer lacks the eccentricities that Zeb was known for. I learned of these guys on the Life is Abuse page awhile back. After seeing that Nate from Destroy, Brain Oil, Squalor, Silenced, among others, was involved,I was definitely intrigued. I haven't heard a band that he was in that I didn't like.
So, without further delay.....have some of their records:

Enslaved in Darkness

split with Sanctum

split with Skaven

and here are a series of videos from "Kill that Cat" via Youtube. They are of Stormcrow playing at Gilman St.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Live at The Haz Mat in 2005

The Jab and then the Hook.....

In Viridis Mons Montis Abyssus has been around for around 2 months now, which isn't really too noteworthy when you line it up with some of the others out there. The reason I mention this is that despite my sparse posts the last week, I am starting to actually get the interaction I was hoping for. Unintentionally, the Noothgrush and Ahisma posts actually put me in touch with some folks I hadn't heard from in years, not to mention a ton of other new allies. It hasn't had quite the local bend I had envisioned but I do know of a good amount of VT readers,the bands will make it up eventually. So this is a thank you to everyone that linked me up and to those who have sent me music or have just given me the go ahead to share their stuff. Tino, Steve, Will, Aesop, Chiyo, Shelley, Tony, Zeb, and anyone else that is slipping my mind......Thank you!!!!

Speaking of Tony, he is one of two bassists in Pennsylvania's Mancruel. They are a three piece and they play fuzzed out lo-fi groove filled shit. They obviously love Man is the Bastard, Neanderthal, and Black Sabbath. They kind of remind me of some of Siege's slower parts too. The recording sounds like it was made on a 4 track and that is perfect for these songs. These songs are form a split tape with Malaysia's SMG.
So please give them a bit of your time,the songs will only run you about 11 minutes, and then send Tony a message through the link above and tell him if you love it or hate or if you just didn't give a fuck. Feedback is the name of the game................

Split tape with SMG

Thanks to all you guys who leave comments......Stay tuned for some more Oakland Crust tomorrow.............Troy

We are not Progress

The scene was Oakland,mid nineties, an era I admittedly knew absolutely nothing about. I was just a 15 year old twerp in good old isolated Vermont and the closest thing to Crust I had heard were the first couple of Sepultura albums. Back then I would of thought Amebix was something I ignored in Biology class. I had no idea that on the other side of the country, Skaven was alive. It wasn't until I was at a show at the Lafayette Center in L.A. and I bought their 7inch from Reggie Rosales that I discovered them. I brought the record home, put it on, and immediately stopped. The sample seemed a bit out of place but the instrumental at the beginning was one of the most epic passages I've ever heard. The term "Stenchcore" gets used as a lot these days and there are a slew of great bands that have really carried the tradition spawned in the early eighties, some memorable, other's not so much. Skaven just stands out more than the rest to me. Zeb's lyrics are more Nietzsche than "Cal" Morris, they reek of Lovecraft or Camus rather than Penny Rimbaud. For all the bands who get dubbed with the honor of being called "Apocalyptic", Skaven is one of the few that really feels that way. There are no forced, cliche-sounding growls here. Zeb comes across on these songs sounding like the fucking Omega man, telling his stories to the ground. The dual bassists, Shane and Mick work perfectly serving their own function and Geoff Evans, well he's just Geoff Evans(Asunder, his current band, will make an appearance here soon.) Some would call this blasphemy,and believe me I do love these bands, I would choose Skaven over Axegrinder or Hellbastard any day. My only reservation saying this is the relatively small discography Skaven treats us to. Beyond the 7inch I mentioned earlier, there is the split LP with Dystopia and the split with Stormcrow. I contacted Zeb and asked for his blessing and he said it would be alright to put a few things up. So I'll put the EP's up because they are my favorite. There should be a discography CD out in the future and I hear they recorded a demo but I'm not sure about either. You can a read a review of their split with Stormcrow here.

Severed/Flowers of Flesh and Blood

split with Stormcrow

Zeb lives in Montana and plays in a great new band called Demonsteed. They have an album out called Nitro Ground Shaker which I 'll post once I get a copy. They kind of remind me of Tony Iommi obsessively reading a Cormac McCarthy book??? Sounds about right!! Geoff Evans plays in Asunder and the rest of the guys, I have no idea where they are or what they are doing? I 'll let Skaven lie now with this alternate version of the song "The Swarm" .
Contact Zeb through the Demonsteed link about that discography CD.

........and with that tribute paid, it's now time for a fun little lesson in Existentialism.
Charles Manson's 1987 interview with the one and only Geraldo Rivera. I'll be damned if I just didn't make some sense out of this diatribe. I realize this was the guy's chance to paint himself in a certain life, but while he was digging himself a hole he would never be free of, I soaked up a bit of wisdom out of this when I first saw it as a teenager.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7


Charles Manson: LIE-Love and the Terror Cult

an interesting listen and I'll leave it at that.....Troy

Memento Mori

Here is a new link to the Memento Mori album. Unfortunately, I couldn't convert them to Mp3's so they are in AIFF files. I apologize to anyone that can't use these. If anyone could point me in the direction of a good converter,I'll upload it one last time. It's just that right now, I can only convert WAV's,M4A's and WMA,s to Mp3.

Stay Tuned...........

Memento Mori

Behold.....The "Hellion"

Big Problem Does Not Equal The Solution. The Solution=Let It Be

Now there is an ambiguous name for an album if ever there was one.I bet most of you didn't realize Crispin"Hellion"Glover ever put out a record. I sure as hell didn't until I noticed on my friend Matt's shelf last Friday night. Say what you want about the mans acting skills, but River's Edge is a classic and that movie probably sucks with anybody else filling that role.
Big Problem Does Not Equal The Solution.The Solution=Let It Be is a mish mash of readings from a few of Crispin's many books, a Charles Manson cover, a Lee Hazelwood cover, and a couple other surprises. Perhaps the most entertaining aspect of the whole package lies in the interactive attempt that's made with the back cover art. an excerpt from Crispin's Wikipedia page explains:
"The back cover of the album is a collage of figures relating to each track on the album, with a puzzle: "All words and lyrics point to THE BIG PROBLEM. The solution lay within the title; LET IT BE. Crispin Hellion Glover wants to know what you think these nine things all have in common." He included his home phone number with copies of the album, encouraging listeners to phone when they had "solved" his puzzle. Glover later commented that he was surprised how many people figured it out."
And almost as weird for the solitary fact that Slayer and the Wipers share the same stage for the soundtrack, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to include the music from River's Edge.

The movie, although ultimately fictitious,is loosely based on the murder of 14 year old girl Marcy Conrad. Marcy was strangled by Anthony Jacques Broussard in Milpitas, California on November 13th, 1981. It seems the 16 year old kid was a bit twisted and had made several attempts at his mother's life prior. The parallel lies in the fact that in both the movie and actuality, the killer shows the body to his friends who respond with callousness. In both cases, while killer's close friends help conceal the body and show genuine interest in their friends' deteriorating innocence, they at the same time went and boasted to others and treated the corpse like a museum. I don't really know why I went so far into this, so while I'm drawing a blank, just go ahead and check out the soundtrack:

River's Edge Soundtrack

For those of you that might be interested in pretty decent synopsis of the Crispin Glover album, here is a page I found that gives a little history on it's creation as well as a couple of his music videos....... here .................................Troy

Wait a Minute.!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait a minute. I fucked up so Don't download the Memento Mori album just yet. The converter I used to change it to Mp3's is a piece of shit and only converts 60% of the songs. I'm going to try to fix it. If not,I'll post it as AIFF files. I 'm just nervous some peoples computers don't support that filetype.Don't let that stop you from getting the Dukes of Nothing album though, that one is just fine!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry if you already downloaded the shit version.

The Return..............

Hell everyone, It was only 2 days but it felt way too long. I have 4 days off in a row from work and I just spent the last 2 being a lazy asshole and chilling with Darrylynn. Not a bad thing because I did get to watch a bunch of movies I was meaning to as well as rekindle my love for some old favorites, I'm just ready to go on a roll. I added some more blogs to the links down on the right. Down Underground, Only In It For The Music, Heinus Noise, Distort Truth Distort Minds, Thee Claw and last but certainly not least, the great Kill that Cat. And speaking of blogs, Cosmic Hearse has now been around for a whole year so if you don't regularly read it, now is your chance for a fresh start. Aesop posts everyday,barring a tour with one of his bands, and his selections are fucking wicked!!!!!
Anyway, now for the album I should have put up on Wednesday. "War and Wine" by Dukes of Nothing. The Dukes of Nothing are something of an all star band of a few great stoner/doom??? groups in England. You've got Doug Dalziel and Dean Berry from Iron Monkey, Stuart O'Hara from Acrimony, and Chris Turner from Orange Goblin.(who will make an appearance here soon enough) They have one album that I know of and here it is: a more pissed Motorhead???,definitely a good place to start. It reminds me a bit of the masterpiece "Coup De Grace" by the aforementioned Orange Goblin(stay tuned,it really is a hell of an album!!!!!)

War and Wine

Now, here's yesterday's post today......

I want to thank Will again for the Ahisma songs and for the bulletin he posted for me on Myspace. Ahisma has been downloaded more than anything else but Noothgrush and I've gotten a ton of email from kids I met in Eugene back in the day. All of the response was nice and I was very glad to hear from Shelley. Besides being a great mother of two wonderful kids, Shelley busted her ass and bent over backwards to do everything she could for the Fall Creek campaign. Whether she was in the forest or helping out everyone she could when they came back to town filthy and tired, she definitely was appreciated by many. I didn't really know her personally when I was there but I was around long enough to perceive her worth to the community. Everyone that I knew out in those trees spoke of her far beyond fondly.

Anyway, Shelley was very cool about sending mean old an Memento Mori album to post. I knew of Memento Mori from their split with Kylesa which has two great songs by them. I didn't really know much of them beyond that including the fact that they had the awesome Leila Abdul Rauf as a member. The Leila Abdul Rauf that plays in the sick Bay Area metal band Saros. I currently lack anything by Saros but as soon as I get it,I'll ask the band if I can put up a few songs off it for everyone to hear. Until then, enjoy this great album:

Memento Mori

Thanks again Shelley, I hope you keep reading regularly.That would be great!!!!

And not to go overboard or anything, but I found this great movie in its' entirety yesterday on Youtube. You may have heard of it. It goes by the name Evil Dead 2. I think Bruce Campbell is the shit. I mean have you guys ever watched Bubba Ho-Tep. Click on the name for the trailer, just do it!!!! I love the whole Evil Dead trilogy and if I can find the other 2 I will post them eventually. I'm sure most of you have seen these but by chance you haven't sit down and enjoy!!

In 11 parts:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11

One more thing until tomorrow, I want to point something out to any Man is the Bastard fans out there. From Glenolden Pennsylvania,hail Mancruel. Just two bassists and a drummer, they are cool so check them out. Thanks for Tony for getting in touch!!!!

Stay tuned...thanks to all who leave comments....Troy

Fuck God in the Face!!!!

Fuck God in the Face, man I always have loved that band name since I saw them play at their house in Eugene, Oregon in the summer of 2000. That summer was a blast and I experienced so much shit during that time, I could write a book . I had arrived in Eugene originally to attend an action camp at the Fall Creek tree sit campaign in the Willamette National Forest outside of Lowell (which is 15 or 20 miles outside of Eugene). They were teaching people to climb and needed some warm bodies that were willing to spend some time up in the giant Douglas Firs. I was in San Francisco at the annual Anarchist Book Fair and had no real plans so when this dude named Pan told me about Red Cloud Thunder and what was going on up there, I said why the fuck not. So i hitched up the coast on the gorgeous 1 interstate and ended up in Oregon. I'll get into the whole Fall Creek story at a later date because right now I want to write about the weekend of June 16th-18th that year. Eugene was in a weird state during those days. Just a year earlier, the infamous June 18th riots had gone on during a "Reclaim the Streets" celebration and there were a bunch of arrests, the most well known arrestee being a man I really admire who goes by the name of Rob Thaxton. The Police used this as an opportunity to harass every person they saw walking down the street in a fucking black hoody. Needless to say, with rumored FBI activity in the area, paranoia was definitely at an all time high in the Whitaker neighborhood.
So, in the spirit of resistance and solidarity, some brave souls went about organizing a sort of guerrilla festival of music and direct action. There were great workshops and movies and lots of destruction and general mayhem going on but the real fun was going on down under the Interstate 5 on ramp in Washington Jefferson park. Someone had scored a generator and with the show certainly not being permitted, the general consensus was that if the cops showed up, everyone was going to grab a piece of equipment and run for the van. Well, I can't remember how many bands showed up that first night but I can tell you the Eugene City Police Force showed up in their full riot gear ready to bust some heads. The one band I do remember was this three piece Grindcore band. They sounded wicked with the sound bouncing off the concrete of the overpass and a ton of Crusty Travelling Punks screaming and hollering during the whole thing. The cops were lined up along each side of the park with batons in hand just looking for any excuse they could find to charge down the hill and join in the ruckus. Funnily enough,for some reason, I don't remember any brutality, just a couple of them getting pissed when this kid Johnny Cat started playing a set of acoustic Rudimentary Peni songs. Apparently they didn't appreciate Nick Blinko's dementia or something?
Either way, back to that "Grindcore" band. For years I didn't know that bands name. I couldn't remember for the death of me whenever I told someone the long drawn out version of this story. Earlier this year I happened to get a copy of Profane Existence in the mail that had an interview with the kick ass Eugene based band Happy Bastards. The members of the band were talking about groups they had played with in the past. This kid Will just happened to spurt out the name Ahisma. Now in a bit of a tangent, I had heard years ago in a Tim Lewis movie
(more on him later), this great band that I hadn't heard before. so when I saw Tim at the Red Barn in Eugene one day, I asked him "hey Tim, who is that band in your movie" and he responded Ahisma. So I made a mental note of it and that song has been burned in my brain to this day. It's called "Sinners in the hands of an Angry God". Anyway, back to the present. I wrote to Happy Bastards and asked them to put me in touch with this Will kid. He wrote me back and turned out to be a pretty nice guy and offered to send me the songs when he got his computer in order. I wrote him back a couple months later and reminded him and he quickly sent me everything he had handy at the time which was their split with Fuck God in the Face, their "Grueling Terror" 7 inch and an unreleased full length. All of this shit is awesome so I figured I would share it with you today. It turns out that that band in the park was in fact the mighty Ahisma. One of life's' riddles finally solved.......

split with Fuck God in the Face

Grueling Terror 7 inch

Unreleased Full Length LP

Will is in the studio with Wolves in the Throne Room right now but when he's finished I'm gonna ask him for some Fuck God in the Face for you to hear. He was also in a band called Human Certainty that I've heard good things about but I've never heard. Maybe he'll share that one too. I am talking to him about getting Wolves in the Throne Room to come play in little 'ol Vermont next spring when they tour. That would be fucking amazing so keep your fingers crossed!!!!!

I mentioned something earlier about a guy named Tim Lewis. I have no idea what he's up to these days but back then he made a couple of really great movies, "Pick Axe" and "Breaking the Spell". I just so happened to find them both on google video so if anyone has any free time, you should definitely check these out.

"Breaking the Spell" is a documentary type movie of the WTO protests in Seattle. It has interviews with a ton of the people that were there and is the best movie on the subject out there.

"Pick Axe" is a film about the Warner Creek fight to stop needless logging in their area. it was co produced with Tim Ream.

Man, I've said enough.....enjoy this shit and leave a comment or something to tell me what you think of the music. Only three people downloaded Syphilitic Vaginas. You are missing out if you don't hear this,seriously people, it only takes a second............................Troy

Possessed to Fuck!!!!!!

There you go....You can't fucking miss that one. Kind of slaps you right across the face from the get go. Wu Tang Clan came and went with a whimper and today you get what I wanted to post yesterday. Seriously, this stuff is the best thing I've heard in a while and they go by the G.I.S.M. inspired moniker Syphilitic Vaginas( if you don't know G.I.S.M., email me and I'll get you up to speed!!!). Syphilitic Vaginas pull together the best parts of my favorite Japanese bands. They combine the wickedness and oddity of G.I.S.M. with the speed and metal of Jurassic Jade. They exude the anthemic pounding of Crow and the bleeding noise saturated rage of Framtid. I hear the hypnotism of Zouo's "Final Agony" forcing its' way through quite often and that is to say the least. They are the perfect Frankenstein's Monster of Japanese Punk and Metal and that's without mentioning the hints of Iron Maiden, Tank,and Bathory they throw at you. And I challenge each and every one of you to tell me that you don't hear "Shout at the Devil" era Motley Crue when you listen to the song "In Devil Night". Go on,refute it!!! I could go off forever because I'm hyped as a motherfucker over this band right now. Really, they are the kind of band you hear and you feel like you should just burn your guitar, because you just aren't going to write riffs this good in such frequency. They are so fucking sick and the solos are just as fucking wicked!!!!!!
Rumor has it,I'm told, that they might not even be Japanese but I've found any information about them few and far between which actually is alright by me. The mystery just makes it sound that much better.
You've got to hear this!!! It's everything they've released so far so make sure you download both parts:35 songs in all.

Syphilitic Vaginas Discography Part 1

Syphilitic Vaginas Discography Part 2

I don't know if they are still active so keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming releases and let me know if you hear of any. There is a song on their Myspace page that is supposedly from an upcoming split but we'll see............. Listen to it here.

And like a dumbass, I left out the part of the Wu Tang Clan post that made me want to do it in the first place. so here are two parts to an interview from their early days. Get down with the O.D.B.

Wu Tang Clan interview Part 1

Wu Tang Clan interview Part 2

Hope you enjoy this as much as I have. It just doesn't get any better than this................Troy

Bring the Muthafuckin' Ruckus

Here it is, the first Rap/Hip Hop post on In Green Mountain Hell. It almost got pushed back because I got the Syphilitic Vaginas Discography CD today, but that will have to wait another day or two. The one and only Wu Tang Clan!!!! I've kind of lost touch with them because everything I've heard after 36 Chambers is pretty unexciting. GZA, RZA, Ghostface Killa, and a couple of others have had some decent solo ventures and I hear their latest isn't so bad, it's just that it was all kind of dull compared to the light that shines when I listen to this album. Their identity and persona's are what really interested me in the first place but while their portrayals of themselves was the backbone of what these guys were about, the music kind of went in the shitter when various members started getting major film roles. Who knows, maybe that is just a coincidence. I'll have to ask Ice Cube next time I see him.
Either way, this is one of my favorites and I'm sure there are a few of you that think these guys are a bunch of capitalist fuckers,and you're definitely right, just throw out your ethics or whatever and bob your head to some Wu Tang, and everything will be fine tonight.

36 Chambers

I'd also like to thank Chiyo from Noothgrush and Amber Asylum for letting me post their albums last week. She also posted a bulletin on Myspace and I've gotten a lot of response via email because of it. If you want to hear one of the most beautiful and Majestic groups out there, check out Amber Asylum.
If anyone is interested in getting their recordings after hearing the samples on their page, email me because I have most of it and would love to share. They are peerless...........Troy