Recently my laptop pretty much died — well, the display went out, it mostly “runs” otherwise; I can connect to it on the network — it was getting mighty old anyway and I found a suitable replacement. As I got my files and settings moved in to the new machine, I decided to take the opportunity to organize some of my files a bit better and delete some things I didn’t really need so as to make some space. In the process, I somehow confused the “iTunes” folder on my Seagate GoFlex network drive, where I kept all my music files (not including lossless files or Audacity projects for my own stuff or Centipede Farm releases, that is), for the usually useless “iTunes” folder that I usually have in my home directory on the hard drive of my computer, and, in my trigger-happiness, deleted. the. entire. thing.

I have since been working to rebuild as much of my iTunes library as I could from what I could pull off my iPod Classic using an app called Music Rescue, and of course there’s all the stuff I have on CD that I can rip again anytime, but I’m sure there’s still a lot of stuff I’ve lost — but I realized that a lot of it I couldn’t remember anyway. And what does eventually spring to mind, I can probably manage to download at some point, and might have on vinyl or cassette anyway. Still, that realization, and coming to the grips of the mental overhead of managing my maddeningly large library of downloaded music turned out to be an opportunity to gain some perspective. Apparently, I have a problem. My relationship with music is obsessive bordering on addictive.

It’s not something that’s ruining my life or anything, but I could stand to stop worrying so much about whether I’m missing out on something cool. There’s probably more music being recorded in a single day in the world than I can listen to in my life. But these days, I too rarely listen to something twice, let alone enough to build a real relationship with it.

One effect of this is that my backlog of “stuff I’d like to write reviews of for the website” is about to be mostly purged. My attempt to check out and evaluate all the big important albums I heard about in 2011 is already nine months into 2012 after all, and there’s a bunch of stuff I’ve barely gotten to. I could probably delete it and not even miss it. It’s just downloads, and unpaid-for ones at that. If I cared about these albums, I’d buy them. Because that’s what I already do with music I really like anyway, unless of course I haven’t heard of it yet, and then what’s the big deal?

I like reviewing music but I need to be less hard on myself. I’m probably not going to write as much on this site about music I wasn’t involved in making, from now on. If you send me something and specifically ask me to write about it, I will try my best. I seem to have no trouble keeping up with that. But no point in volunteering myself to write about stuff nobody asked me to.

Anyway The Centipede Farm is obviously becoming more of a “label” than a “music blog” these days anyway and I’m really into that. I have opportunities to put together little cassette releases by a whole lot of really excellent artists. I should probably be placing the focus of this website more on them. I am still open to contributing reviews for other sites, though, so if you have one and you’d like me to write some stuff for it, by all means get in touch and I’ll try to fit something in. And if you’re interested in just keeping up with what I’m discovering online lately, I post mad links to the Facebook page, so you should follow that. And comment a lot, because one-sided conversations are boring.

Anyway here’s a couple things I still wanted to get a few words in about:

The Big Drum in the Sky Religion: Ithyfallacy: A Tribute to Rudimentary Peni – I must admit to not being familiar with Rudimentary Peni, but have seen their name come up here and there in experimental/outsider/oddball music circles. It’s ostensibly a British punk rock band, but supposedly headed up by a rather eccentric fellow with some pretty far-out ideas and lyrics. You don’t need to be familiar with R.P. to get into this “tribute”, however. The booklet deceptively contains a long list of hilarious song titles, but the disc actually contains a single 79-and-a-half minute track, not entirely different in intent and form from Vive la Revelación that I wrote of the other day. The foundation of it is a loop of furious rolling toms and a buzzy bassline that falls in and out of sync with it. Over this, a few things come and go, including some quite nice noise-guitar jamming, some of that upright piano from Vive, and I’m pretty sure I heard a jaw harp in there somewhere. The strong rhythmic drive of the piece, courtesy the toms, makes it nicely conducive to shamanic states of mind, or at least I suspect so, it definitely got me spaced out and grooving along despite being once again a piece of insane length and hypnotic repetition. The artwork, black-and-white drawings, is also pretty stellar, reminiscent of the great Food Fortunata.

The Mighty Accelerator: Back From the Dead EP – Four more tunes from Ottumwa’s sleazemeisters. Mixed by Andy the guitarist, this has a notably rawer sound than Soccer Mom — I could have used a bit more vocals, finding it difficult to understand some of the lyrics without the benefit of headphones, the focus is more on the catchy rhythm guitar riffs which is fine too. The lyrical concepts of songs like “Lesbian Date Rape” and “Werewoofs and Fast Cars” are deliciously goofy. “This Hand Needs A Job” hits all the double entendres you expect but it’s unclear how intentionally, so you’re actually left with a quite sincere lament on small-town blue-collar employment troubles, that builds nicely through and an uptempo multi-part bridge section and some fist-raising whoa-oh backup vocals. “Truck Stop Lovin’” has a similar epic structure and build section. Money lyric: “she’s not much to look at, but she’s out of sight.” The download is free and the CD-R edition available from the band contains all of Soccer Mom as bonus tracks.

Wreck and Reference – Youth – With Black Cassette, Wreck and Reference set about showing to a new generation of metal kids what some crusty old Skinny Puppy fans already knew, that electronics can be heavy. The sampler-and-drums duo have taken an intentionally cleaner production approach with Youth and continue to evolve a sound that evades easy categorization yet carries wide appeal for all lovers of the unpleasant, drawing on a palette of influences miles wide and maybe just as deep but that appropriately draws out references to doom, black metal, industrial, noise, and Swans-y apocalyptic folk. The song structures tend toward the linear, and even in those moments where the sampler is employed making guitar-like sounds the effect is something otherworldly and quite other than you’d hear if it were a live guitarist. Vocal approaches and rhythms are as wide-ranging as the literally infinite palette of sounds from which the hugest and are so tastefully chosen. You can name-your-price for a download but the vinyl edition from The Flenser is gorgeous to behold and totally worth getting, especially the green-and-black vinyl which you should act fast if you want. This album and this band are really fresh and special and you should definitely give them a chance.

Samuel Locke-Ward: Double Nightmare – There is more that I could say about Samuel Locke-Ward and his latest opus (a two-hour, 40-song digital album!) than I have the energy to type here. You should get everything he makes, and give him all your money besides, because he is amazing and beyond explanation.

Mekigah – The Necessary Evil – Australian gothy black/doom project’s second album loses the flimsy storyline and high-school drama-kid vibe that might have marred The Serpent’s Kiss for some, but without sacrificing any of the grandeur of their deliberately-paced metal songs swimming in cavernous concert-hall reverb and symphony-in-a-box keyboards. I hesitate to reference Type O Negative just because I never much cared for that band, but it’s a fitting comparison (especially with respect to the vocals), and I’d even say there’s a little bit of a Candlemass vibe going on at times. On “Bloodlust” the vocals get so low that I’m pretty sure he’s doing that Tuvan throat-singing or whatever it’s called. But Mekigah also do harsh well here, both vocally and musically, resulting in actually quite a fresh synthesis of doomy and “blackened” elements. If the album gets at all maudlin at any point it would be on “Touching a Ghost,” which I would liken to a sort of pop-DSBM version of The Shangri-La’s “Leader Of The Pack” what with the sound-effects bridge to advance the story line. There are some pretty cool noisy ambient interstitial tracks, which help to tie it together as more of a rock album, as opposed to the ambitious opera/concept thing they went for on the previous album, and I think it’s a welcome change.

Orchid Capricorn Like a lot of retro metal or trad doom or “stoner” metal (I wish we get a better name for it one of these days — my own personal appreciation for it didn’t really take off until I could no longer be credibly referenced by that word), Orchid are borrowing pretty heavily from Black Sabbath here, enough that the references are occasionally in danger of getting too blatant, but then again, Sabbath weren’t the only band in the old days doing this kind of stuff, they were just the most well-known. There’s still an excitement for and vitality to this sort of music even after so many decades. I myself am more than glad to listen to heavy riffy rock tunes like this any time. I don’t know what it is about it, but these familiar elements, in the right hands, just never seem to get old, and Orchid seems to have that touch. I also like how their singer can pull off both Ozzy-ish and Dio-ish moments, his own sound hitting a nice territory somewhere between the two. And the title song on this album, “Capricorn”, is just too good to miss out on.

Marax Funeral Liturgy Marax (Eric Crowe) put out an astounding amount of material in 2011, even for a noise or drone artist (of which he is both, and you might as well throw in dark ambient and death industrial and all that into the mix too). This is one of several download-only ambient drone releases put out by Marax right around the same time and feels very much of a piece with them in style. This one is among my favorites, however, perhaps due to its not being or having any 20+ minute tracks, though I do realize that’s not a great bias to have on my part. The title track starts it out as a low, almost inaudible drone that fades in pretty quickly with a thick sepulchral atmosphere. Each of the five tracks, themed around funerals, and one of them even featuring a slowed-down sample of a funeral sermon (possibly backwards? It’s hard to make out the actual words), is a different setting of waves of dark and heavy but also very pure sound flowing in and out of each other. Very meditative and ominous.

Marax/Coma Centauri Coerced to Pull the Trigger The liner notes spell out the concept of this release, and it’s a concept that extends to a lot of Marax’s work that of suicide. According to these notes, Eric and Brandon wanted to explore it as a theme not so much in terms of the “desolate and depressive” modes as it is usually approached, or even the tranquility of a romanticized escape from pain; rather they wanted to explore the mindset of a person leading up to the act, the frustrations and anxiety and trapped feelings that drive one there. That idea is translated by these two artists each through their styles of frantic, nervous harsh noise on their respective sides of this tape.

Marax’s side narrates a suicide by gunshot, the first 13 minutes depicting the emotional states preceding it, then the planning of the event, then the last moments holding the gun just before firing, culminating in the sound of the gunshot and a brief silence; the state of death itself makes up the remaining 17 minutes in the form of a ghostly drone with some amazingly haunting vocal sounds. Marax’s ability to compellingly navigate both harsh and ambient sounds and unite them thematically is unique, and it’s represented especially well here.

Coma Centauri’s side sticks more specifically to the harsh discomfort, and joins this emotional state with third-person perspectives in the form of sparse sampling of news reports about suicides. Overall it’s less of a narrative approach, instead a set of pieces examining different facets of the subject of suicide, its causes and the social issues relating to it.

I greatly respect how these two noisicians approached this release with a concept and an idea of how they wanted to approach it. Noise music as pure abstract and/or physical sound is plenty fun and can even be awe-inspiring, but Marax and Coma Centauri set out here to make a noise album presenting a very honest perspective on a subject, a deeply emotional one at that, and the result succeeds on both viscreal and intellectual levels. Order from Worthless Recordings if they have any left.

Midnight Satanic Royalty — One of the coolest things about classic heavy metal is that in the days before metal got all complicated, it was really just rock and roll amped up on horror, sex, and aggression. Midnight keep this spirit and sound alive and fiery as they delight in evil and depravity. Songs like “Necromania” and “Lust, Filth, and Sleaze” are snarled out fast and furious with simple headbanging riffs, and sound a bit like a cross between Venom and Mötorhead with a dash Social Distortion guitar melodicism. Yes, it kicks ass.

Recent times have seen a surge in “tablehooter” music — a terminology I heard from Hal McGee, and which I’ve embraced for its non-brand-specific superiority over “casio” — that being music made on cheap consumer-level electronic keyboards. I think the boundaries of exactly what models of keyboards qualify as tablehooter or casio might not be clear. Maybe it’s more of an aesthetic. Anyway here’s some good stuff for getting your keyboard vibe:

“Cheap and Plastic” compilation — A newly released huge (49 tracks!) download compilation instigated and compiled by the incomparable Hal McGee and dedicated to tablehooter music. Des Moines is well-represented on it, by the way, as it sports tracks by yours truly, Moulttrigger (Dave Wren), and Brian Noring. This has probably some of the noisiest and most experimental approaches to tablehooters you’re likely to hear, with many of the artists going beyond just overdubbing or adding effects to actually circuit-bending the devices, that is, modifying the devices themselves with custom homemade hacks to their circuitry.

Larry “The Wizard” Sievers “Wizard in a Trancedelic Dream” — Folks not from around Iowa City may not be familiar with Larry, but he’s definitely deserving of wider recognition in the homemade music scene, so here’s the dirt: he’s a 60-something fellow who sorta looks kinda like J Mascis with a mustache, has a devoted love of metal music, and composes these really cool instrumentals on his keyboard. Here is an article about him from the University of Iowa’s newspaper The Daily Iowan. A fair amount of his music has been recorded and come out for public consumption, but fuck knows how much more he has written or locked up in his head. I picked this tape up at Record Collector in Iowa City and it seems to have been put out by one Adam Luksetich (a member of Bongrider and probably active in some other capacities as well), the only contact info being his email address, that being his name all together as one word at gmail. Otherwise you can listen and download at Larry’s bandcamp. It’s a lot of fun, both for reveling in the kitchy keyboard sound and the way that the simple pre-programmed drum parts fall off beat when Larry goes into meters like 5/4 on occasion, and for the triumphant, epic melodic style of the pieces, which are all about cool stuff like wizards, dragons, vampires, you get the idea — good stuff to put on to get yourself pumped up and in the mood to go out and conquer the world.

New Future Wanderer “Palace In My Room” — So Leah and I have been house-shopping lately now that we’re able to qualify for mortgages again. A while ago we hit an open house up in Urbandale. The house was total late-80′s Suburban Playset, built in 1987, and touring it was honestly like walking into a 1987 time warp with its weirdly bland style. Pretty much everything in it was original — the beige paint, blotchy-patterned carpeting, the popcorn ceilings, the beige touch-tone telephone on the wall with the extra long receiver cord, the appliances with that goofy cursive lettering on them, the showers all having those massage-piks with the big clunky head on them that you can rotate the collar to switch it between like 12 different spray patterns. The whole thing flipped this weird late-’80s switch in my head that keeps getting jammed now. I was overtaken with a longing to buy this house and recreate 1987 in it just to hide in. Find an old used Fisher component system, set up my Apple IIe again, take up a Tae Kwon Do class. I felt like the world was just better when I was 12 and it shouldn’t have changed. Lately though, I begin to think it hasn’t actually changed that much.

Had I gone through with this nutty plan, I would right away begin seeking out more music like New Future Wanderer to play in my new place. The artist trading card says that Jeff Roman hails from the “overwhelmingly underwhelming suburbs of central New Jersey,” and from that phrase I get a mental picture of his neighborhood being full of houses like that one.

Despite the name, it’s really on old future that New Future Wanderer conjures up, sounding like a 1980s bedroom-recorded shot at sci-fi synth-pop. Sure, ’80s nostalgia and retrofuturism are probably passé to a lot of you now, but I really love the way Roman does it here. Everything is blown out and distorted, making for some really noisy moments that might seem more modern, but this patina just adds to the effect since it sounds like an amateurish cassette recording like on some underground tape release back in the day. It also makes it hard to make out much of the lyrics apart from a few phrases like “I’m a future man” and stuff about feelin’ good on a spaceship, but the lyrics are secondary; what I think keeps me coming back to this tape is the atmosphere and all the little catchy four-note keyboard melodies.

I was going to stick the bandcamp widget of it here, but Lava Church seems to have taken the album down from their account. The tape is still available on their store, currently on sale for $3.50.

Lovebrrd — speaking of the Lava Church label, it’s run by Patrick McBratney who is also totally owns the casio vibe as Lovebrrd. Lovebrrd recordings sound very homemade, a real basement/boombox vibe, and the keyboards sound kind of blown-out like he’s playing them through the overdrive channel of a guitar amp (he probably is). The keyboard melodies and deadpan vocals, always sung through enough effects that you pretty much give up on trying to decipher the lyrics, have a definite gothy darkwave streak to them. Pat has since applied the Lovebrrd name to a wider variety of sounds and sonic experiments, so it remains to be seen whether he comes back to this tablehooter vibe but he was ahead of the curve on it in the beginning and did it nicely.

I’ve been winding up with a lot of really nifty tapes and CD-Rs via trades, since getting this tape-label thing going. Of particular interest at the present time are the stuff I’ve gotten from Bob Bucko Jr and his label Personal Archives, run out of Dubuque, Iowa.

One of my favorites so far has been Cowboy Funeral by Bob and two other guys collectively calling themselves Implied Consent. The tape cases are hand-painted and the tape itself is hand-markered with the band name and title showing through the unpainted parts of the case. Brief “songs” (no individual titles listed) of philosophical hilarious freestyle stream-of-consciousness lyrics with “fuckin’” used as punctuation, sometimes reminding me of Rock’s Chosen Warrior (don’t worry if you don’t catch the reference, it’s pretty local), over crude noisy semi-improvised accompaniment done on seemingly whatever instrumentation was lying around, maybe a few overdubs done later and definitely edited and fucked with as postproduction. This stuff is insanely fun. It’s what Black Cum wishes they could be if they were good.

The split between Bob’s solo incarnation “BBJr” and someone called Aisle begins with Aisle’s side, Narcotica. “crest, fallen” is a found-sound and field recording collage piece. Unrecognizable manipulated sounds, sped-up conversation, video game space sound effects, a small dog barking, various bits of music, some synthesizer playing, stitched together in a warm/cold sonic quilt. “Narcotica” starts similarly before working itself into a neat groove of soft steam engine violins and delay pedal rhythms with electronic toy rocket launches before burying them in a 4-track feedback attack in a parking garage. Bob’s side is the five-part suite Sex Funeral where each part is a short series of lone electronic sounds given pan delay and plenty of space to stretch out in, and each movement exploring a different tonal color space — distortion/feedbacky at first, then glassy spaceship synths through staticky radio, then metallic, and so on, seemingly working from harsher to mellower. It reminds me of some of those classic electronic music records from the 1960s.

Floating Cave is the name denoting yet another group made up of Bob and two other persons, and Strip the Lights was recorded live as part of the Nash Gallery opening late this April. Four improvised soundtrack-like synth and feedbacky electric guitar pieces with audible audience presence, all very atmospheric and pretty and a touch ominous besides.

You can order any of this stuff on tape via the Personal Archives Bandcamp site. Or, I acquired a few extra copies of Floating Cave and a couple other Personal Archives items for distro from Bob in trade when I was up in Dubuque with Fetal Pig last week, so if you get something from me you might end up with a bit of it. I intend to write a little something here about the rest of them soon, especially, and this is one I’m really excited about obviously, Personal Archives now has this out:

That’s right it’s a Distant Trains/BBJr split tape. Right on!

From Captcha Records comes the very nice “How to Fuck All Your Co-Workers in One Sitting” cassette released last year. The tape is a pro job with printing on the cassette shell and the whole works and sounds great. I think side A collects some of Bob’s 4-track home recordings from the 1990s. Exploratory instrumentals (“Too Long for This World” kinda feels like a “my first lap steel” exercise but it sets a great mood) with lots of direct-lined distorted guitar, skronkiness, and that great afternoon nap with the window open feel that so much great 1990s bedroom lo-fi has. The B side is more recent recordings, seemingly made for something caled Nitetrotter, that show Bob’s folk/jazz side, free-improvising off “Over the Rainbow” and “Amazing Grace” around a couple more straightforward folk numbers.

The Devin Dart/Bob Bucko Jr split tape from Felt Cat Tapes I’m not even going to tell you much about because it’s out of print already but it’s pretty special. Since you have the link there, you should probably explore the Felt Cat label a bit.

Samuel Locke Ward/Toby Goodshank split 7″ Three short lo-fi tunes each from two anti-folk heroes. First, Sam’s trademark mix of soaring melodies with dark humor and violent revenge fantasies, accompanied here with violin and saxophone. Actually, it starts out with what seems like a really sweet song, at least at first, “Bliss Blue Skies,” but Sam usually doesn’t sing this sort of thing wthout a slightly exaggerated yet masterful air of sarcasm. “The Top” will definitely stick with you after spinning this record. The flip makes for quite a contrast: Toby Goodshank, who if you’re not familiar with the name came to prominence in The Moldy Peaches, brings a much gentler approach, I would even call it “chill.” The minimally-instrumented songs take you to lazy late-summer bonfire parties on the beach with your best buds, with just enough specks of dark weirdness to keep it relateable. The closer “Virgo Song” especially fits this description and is the laid-back high point of the record.

Dead Milkmen The King In Yellow The heralded return of the Dead Milkmen may not be an unmitigated triumph, at least not in my ears — Joe Jack Talcum’s output outside of this band in 2011 surpasses it in quality for me; it’s taken me a few listens to find what I really like in The King In Yellow — but there is something there.

Mostly, I think the album starts out awkwardly. The first track is a two-parter, beginning with the album’s title song, a surfy guitar instrumental in the vein of classic Dead Milkmen B-side “Vince Lombardi Service Center”, which then segues into a sort of rowdy black-humorous Irish folk number, specifically a cover of Raymond Calvert’s “The Ballad of William Bloat”. Next, in “Fauxhemia”, Rodney Anonymous muses about how he just doesn’t get Norah Jones. Is she still popular? Did he write this song in 2004? I kind of get what he’s expressing — he feels out of touch with his liberal middle-aged peers and their safe, wannabe-intellectual, bourgious Stuff White People Like interests — but the complaint seems nonetheless petty and a bit curmudgeonly, and is grafted incongruously onto a total non-sequitur of a chorus, a wacko rant about a “300-pound psychic baby,” an image that on its own feels rather Dead-Milkmen-by-the-numbers. “She’s Affected” comes off similarly petty — I think we can all point to someone we know that’s like the character he’s describing, but if there’s anything that’s become nearly as tiresome as pretentious twits, it’s people bitching about pretentious twits. In “Meaningless Upbeat Happy Song” Rodney throws a jab at child beauty pageants, disclaiming “yes, I know they’re an easy target.” Well actually, Rodney picks on a whole lot of easy targets on The King In Yellow.

But once you get to or past “Meaningless Upbeat”, which is track 4, the next several songs aren’t half bad. “Hangman” hilariously envisions the traditional kids’ game brought to life as a game show where the contestants literally get hanged, with spooky theremin to boot. “13th Century Boy” is pretty clever and “Commodify Your Dissent” is dead on in its criticism of mass-media’s co-opting of dissidence. “Can’t Relax” is another damn fine Joe Jack tune. There are still a number of lyrical headscratchers and awkwardly dated references; in “Some Young Guy,” Joe Jack’s portrayal of a secretly depraved older man stalking a younger man for eventual murder, the protagonist tells us of his target, “he’s not a rocker, he’s not a mod.” Are there mods and rockers anymore? And if there are, is it realistic for this character to be concerned with them? It’s unclear whether or not “Solvents (For Home and Industry)” is intended with outrage at the chemical industry or just as a funny story or what.

If you’re hoping for another Big Lizard or even Beelzebubba, you might be a bit disappointed in The King In Yellow. None of it’s quite as funny or even just bizarre in the way you might expect from this venerable institution if you’re familiar mainly with their most revered work. You do, however, get the sensationalized portrayals of society in decline and references chosen for shock value tossed loosely about. Loyal fans won’t find anything to turn them off. The King In Yellow aims for a balance of the social commentary the Dead Milkmen tried for in their Hollywood Records period and their distinctive skewed Weekly World News-infected worldview and sense of humor, and doesn’t miss the mark by quite as far as they have at times in the past.

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats Blood Lust “I was born a wicked man, no hopes or dreams / I get my kicks from torturing and screams,” explains the harmonzed falsetto, half-buried in the mix, that will lead us through Blood Lust, at its entrance in opening track “I’ll Cut You Down” (following an ambient intro featuring, seemingly apropos of nothing, a TV switching channels). Thus is introduced the album’s central concept, a diaristic account of the doings of a serial killer who imprisons and tortures his exclusively female victims, this story delivered to a heavy retro acid-rock musical setting. This album made a bit of a splash in doom/stoner/retro metal circles in 2011 after coming literally out of nowhere, specifically, a backwoods England sort of nowhere, leaving the band and associates scrambling to fill unexpected demand from the small pressing. It was recorded on an old tape machine in a crumbling old barn and it sounds that way, all blown-out and in the red. In digital format this lends the charm of a scratchy old record played on your old turntable, but I have to wonder whether it’s even listenable on vinyl for people with less than high-end gear. At a few points the songs feel a bit samey, relying heavily on that swingy acid-blues rhythm, so that it can be hard to remember just which track some of its many memorable hooks actually came from, but those hooks are definitely there and will find you at later moments. Everything grooves hard and feature some seriously badass guitar riffs and leads and several very tasteful uses of keyboards. It’s not hard to see why this made a few year-end lists.

Admiral Browning Battle Stations Uh-oh, instrumental prog-metal jams with fusiony jazz inflections. But Admiral Browning emphasize texture, mood, melody, and badass riffs rather than wankery, yet the agile playing still impresses. This jams hard, has a lot going for it, and pretty cool cover design too. Very cool.

Captain Three Leg Monkey and the Blue Jay EP One of C3L’s many interesting diversions from grindcore. The homebrew recording M.O. of Andy Koettel and crew, and the rawness of some of the musicianship involved, gives these diversions a charming amateurism that’s an enjoyable quality in this set of three goofy ramblin’ blues-rock tunes. Probably not essential, but good fun, and fuck it, it’s free.

Pennyhawk Another Layer By now this release is rendered obsolete by the recently released Sisterbones which includes at least some, if not all, of these songs (possibly same recordings even). This material definitely deserved a slicker presentation when these CD-Rs surfaced because Kate Kennedy’s folkishly inclined songs and wisecracking lyrics are more than good enough to keep up with the Ames boys she’s usually found in proximity to.

“Mighty Redwood forest / Slay me with your shade.” Two lines that rather elegantly summarize a lot of what Olde Growth is about. I slept on this video premiere for a couple weeks after seeing it on The Obelisk and I also had intended to work up a bit about their self-titled sole studio release into one of my “stuff from 2011″ posts, but have ended up taking a long time to get around to that too. Somehow I suspect Olde Growth wouldn’t have a problem with that, as they take their time with things too, seeming to intentionally grow their profile at the pace of the ancient “giant of the Western shore” that they celebrate in this brilliant piece of transcendental Americana forest doom. The Boston duo first self-released Olde Growth on free download and on CD in eco-friendly packaging back in 2010 and I’m pretty sure it was the now-defunct Doomed To Be Stoned In A Sludge Swamp download blog where I first heard of it (among may other excellent bands such as the distinctly more urban themed Kowloon Walled City; incidentally if you missed it, some of the Swampers now have something to do with Doommantia). Meteor City picked up the band and reissued the album last year, making it now one of my favorite albums of two different years. It is currently one of the $6.66 “Killer Deals” at All That Is Heavy making it one hell of a deal measured in awesome-per-dollar.

It’s gotten a lot of mention from me here on this site as well, which is a lot of words expended on a band with such a scant quantity of recordings out in a two-year span. Probably because I like it a lot. Of course, I’m a sucker for drummer-bassist duos. The fuzz bass is often thickened up with an octave pedal giving it a majestic church-organ-like tone. Stylistically Olde Growth draw from a wide area of doom and psychedelic metal in their riffs and variations of tempos and vocal tones. Many sections have a distinctly bell-bottom vibe, especially those with melodic vocals, fittingly with the mystical and nature themes in the lyrics. Other tracks involve epic battles or fantasy themes. Opener “The Grand Illusion” is particularly notable for describing 20th century warfare in rewind, with such imagery as planes flying backwards vacuuming up bombs. Darker passages, sometimes touching on warfare and/or destruction, draw tastefully from death doom and sludge; “Cry of the Nazgul” (the first section of a three-part track) works a spot-on Noothgrush impression. I’d also definitely recommend this band to Yob fans.

Credits list only the two band members Stephen LoVerme on bass and vocals and Ryan Berry on drums but a couple other sounds pop up. I could swear there’s a guitar solo in “Life in the Present”; “Red Dwarf” is a short synthesizer space-out forming an intermezzo between “Sequoia” and the rest of the album’s second half such that it flows as a kind of suite, intentionally or not, and somewhere in the instrumental “Everything Dies” I’m almost certain I hear some mellotron. Or maybe this could all be clever use of effects on the bass.

Olde Growth should be wrapping up a tour tonight wherein probably the closest they came to Des Moines was Grand Rapids, Michigan but they definitely deserve some attention further west.

The Earwigs/Gorgonized Dorks Alien Noize Attack split CD-R Two legends of noise each put in a track of 19 minutes and change; The Earwigs, whom I’m glad to be finally mentioning on this blog for the first time, give us a live recording from ’05. It sounds like it was recorded on a boombox, in the best way that that can sound. BCA and his cohort for this gig unleashed a storm of distorted feedback, electronic drums, and incoherent proclamations that sound like they’re being shouted into microphones run through guitar amps. A blast of fun of that very distinctly Earwigs flavor. Gorgonized Dorks serve up “Nibiru Pirate Radio”, a piece of electronic tabletop gadget noise sounding like apocalyptic alien invasion destruction with sirens wailing and alarms going off and shit blowing up, and then, gradually becoming clearer, a sample of “I said ‘fuck you’ loud and clear!” Available from Smell The Stench [warning: nsfw site design] or just find BCA online somewhere like Facebook or his email bizzarrealien at yahoo.com.

Orthodox Baal I really like Orthodox (remind me to order more of their records soon). And hearing that, detractors might respond, “yeah, Orthodox is that kind of band you would really like, you chin-strokey weirdo.” Though ostensibly presented as a doom metal band, the Spanish trio’s incorporation of roiling volcanic avant-jazz, improvisation, and themes from the religious folklore of southern Spain, along with their propensity for such out-of-nowhere moves as the 2009 Sentencia album wherein they eschewed not only amplification, but for most of it guitars as well (its centerpiece track, the 26-minute “Ascension,” is arranged for vocal, drums, upright bass, piano, and clarinet, and is no less “doomy” for it!), could be seen as pretentious and outré enough to hinder their endearment to less nerdishly-inclined metalheads. Plus there’s the way Marco Serrato Gallardo runs all, and I mean all, of his vocals through that weird gurgly chorus effect, and that whole thing about performing in black monks’ robes. Revisiting the Orthodox catalog, however, Baal turns out to be their most straightforward album of doomed, slow, fuzzed-out psychedelic metal so far, while still remaining true to many of Orthodox’s, shall we say, unorthodox, approaches, making the album especially accessible and recommendable to the curious, not to mention quite possibly their best to date. Baal opens with one of their spaced-out jazzy flights, “Alto Padre”, which turns out to be a reworking of “YHVH”, the B-side from their excellent 2010 Matse Avatar 7″. But from there it’s mostly doomed riffage easily appreciated by fans of classic Black Sabbath or Sleep — at least that’s what forms the foundations of these songs, all of which are packed with engaging twists and changes; some of the more far-out elements such as Borja Diaz Vera’s jazzy, around-the-beat drumming, are still present, but are very well incorporated into the fabric of what amount to just really cool songs, not just weird pieces. There is also an especially high energy level, with Gallardo’s vocal performance working up to a frothing scream well beyond his usual deadpan on “Taurus”, and some especially furious guitar solos by Ricardo Jimenez Gómez all over the place. Plus, wah bass! Orthodox is really tearing the roof off through the mid section of Baal. The final track “Ábrase la Tierra” works a Yob-ish trudge, includes an organ, and gradually disintegrates, free-jazz style (Art Ensemble Of Chicago often comes to mind for me when they pull this trick) into a noise jam that feels somehow not so much self-indulgent as such noise jams normally do, but instead, totally of a piece with the song’s intentions. Baal gets better every time I listen to it.

Mummifier Advanced Mummification Procedure This long-awaited release from this Ottumwa-based death metal outfit featuring Andy of Captain 3 Leg and The Mighty Accelerator and several other dudes with whom I’m passingly acquainted, recorded in the spring of 2010, finally saw release in 2011 well after the band itself was done for, with Grindcore Karaoke helping out online and Hurts To Hear doing the limited 100-copy run on purple cassette tapes. It’s a furious blast of heavy themed around mummies and Egypt, sporting a wacked sense of black humor and several theremin solos. I’m really a bit bummed that I didn’t get out to see these guys live when they were still at it — they played Des Moines at least a couple times shortly after I moved here and I’d have probably gone if I’d had any idea that Andy was involved. If you’re in Des Moines, I believe ZZZ Records has some tape copies as well. Check it out.

J Mascis Several Shades Of Why Mascis is well known as a “maximum volume yields maximum results” kind of guy when it comes to Dinosaur Jr., where he makes the most of prodigious guitar firepower, in part through its contrast to his quiet demeanor and hermetic lyrical and vocal creak. Several Shades Of Why isn’t the first time he’s turned down and brought the focus on his songwriting, but it is the first time he’s done it in the studio with all new material. I get the feeling that if we were to be able to hear homemade bedroom demos of tunes J wrote for Dinosaur before bringing them to the full plugged-in band, they might not sound too far off from this, though the tracks on this album have obviously been more meticulously pored over, even bringing in some guest instrumentalists for extra color. A signature Mascis electric solo doesn’t show up until track 5 “Is It Done” but there’s plenty of very pretty fancy fingerwork on acoustic guitars all over the album, and more importantly, a wealth of great tunes delivered with striking intimacy and vulnerability. This probably got more spins at home on chill Sunday afternoons than anything else released in 2011.

The Disciplines Virgins Of Menace I gather that Ken Stringfellow gets his rock and roll kicks out with his Norwegian buddies in The Disciplines and this in some way accounts for the more pop-oriented leanings of his other activities of recent years including his contributions to The Posies’ Blood/Candy. Virgins Of Menace shows us that Smoking Kills was no one-off or fluke, if anything it rocks out even harder; and as there are precious few songwriters to match Ken’s wit and melodic cleverness apart from his Posies counterpart Jon Auer, hearing such raging guitar rock arrangements applied to his tunes makes for a great pleasure. Overall the album has enough attitude to make “Kill The Killjoy” stick out as an unusually pop moment, like a lost Posies tune that wandered into a Hives album, but it doesn’t hurt things any. “Everything Forever (Pig Wars)” momentarily serves up some down and dirty blues; the stylistic and titular reference point of “AD/HD” is almost too obvious but I have to say I’ve heard few impressions of classic AC/DC, instrumentally at least, to match its chorus. Raucous fun with brains and heart, Virgins Of Menace is a damn fine rock album and yet another fine chapter in Stringellow’s distinguished career.

Mumfords Eyes Another product of the incestuous and prolific Ames scene that fills out the full-band lineups of Christopher The Conquered and now also Pennyhawk, Mumfords (a name with unfortunate potential to be confused with a much more famous act, but with special meaning to the musicians involved that precludes changing it) is headed up by one of Ames’ biggest musical instigators, the trumpet-wielding Nate Logsdon. “Coffee and Whisky” makes for an odd opener, being a seven-minute country ballad built around the back story of a desperate and probably doomed road trip to Houston, and is similar to Mumfords’ awesome side of their split 7″ with Samuel Locke-Ward & The Boo-Hoos but with much less humor intended, in that it seems musically a bit repetitious, but really shines when you pay attention to the story-telling lyrics with all their meaningful details. Several of the songs that follow seem to be themed around a story of a couple guys who decide to go into the methamphetamine business, possibly filling in even more back-story to “Coffee and Whisky”. It’s an abrupt change of mood into the weirderiffic, celebratory, revivalesque “Two-Eye”, driven by saxophones and call-and-response shouts. From there Mumfords visit a variety of musical modes and moods. “The Mirror Me” references my hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, an apropos corner of America to figure prominently in this character’s life. The story of drunkenness and tweakedness spiraling out of control gets progressively more unhinged until a climactic disaster in “Cookin’ Day” and we next find our protagonist in a piano ballad “The Prisoners Need You Here”. A nice variety of instruments is employed throughout the album, sidestepping guitar-driven rock to make room for horns and the occasional piano, and Nate delivers his lines with just the right dose of over-the-top drama. Whether the final two tracks relate to the same storyline or not is unclear, but we get a rollicking story of a professor’s paranoia about being caught growing weed and an upbeat philosophical number. Nate has a gift for storytelling and his crew have a gift for realizing big band arrangements with big energy, and with its fascinating and sympathetic examination of low life, this is an impressive first full-length.

Heirs Hunter Last weekend I went to Startup Weekend Des Moines, which is this thing where you spend a weekend building some kind of new business or at least postential business, usually based around a web site or mobile app or some other bit of software. People often pull all-nighters at these things but I lack the ability to write working code without sleep. I did stay out there pretty late both Friday and Saturday nights, however, and it just so happened that this little 3-song EP was in my car CD player the whole weekend and formed a perfect soundtrack for driving home along I-235 at three in the morning. These tracks come off for me as mood-oriented post-rock instrumentals in the vein of Mogwai or Giants or certain moments of early Murder By Death, with a dose of gloom. “Hunter” works a slow, dark groove with the requisite big reverby night-sky guitar; a spooky, wordless operatic female vocal comes in for the louder parts, at some point a skittering TR-707 joins the rhythm section. “Symptom” builds around a low-tuned bassline that may have wandered in from some Godflesh track and a gothy synth line with lead guitars harmonizing off it. “Never Land”, which, go figure, is a Sisters Of Mercy cover, never wanders far from the feel it establishes at the outset of its twelve minutes and change; it’s not particularly melodic and lacks any big moments, going instead for a gradual buildup then ebb of the wash of sustained guitar and keyboards that’s anchored by steady drums and a characteristically Cure/Sisters Of Mercy sounding bass riff, the sum of which parts is pretty engaging in its own right.

Neon Lushell Modern Purveyors of Filth and Degradation (in a Time of Peace and Understanding) Brian Pitt describes his dreams and rants like a madman into a phone and Ira Rat builds haunting ambient stuff around it. I talked this outfit up a bit in 2011 and just generally tried to keep everyone apprised of their activities because I dig this.

Godstopper Empty Crawlspace I often wonder if genuinely scary guitar rock is even possible anymore, but then I listen to this. Good lord this is some creepy, ugly, queasy, discordant shit that genuinely sounds like the product of profoundly depraved individuals operating out of somewhere completely cut off from polite society. After a 2010 demo they put these 4 songs out on cassette, which I never managed to get hold of, played some shows, then apparently put the download up for free and forgot to update their website ever again some time around March.

Asian Women on the Telephone ICanT Different in feel from Freedom As Mama Told Me, still consisting mainly of longish jams but in a more digestible quantity, and of a rather darker tone, more electronics and chanting, less hyperactive shouting. A bit like early Cabaret Voltaire or Excepter.

Kiwi Pizza Mary Ann (In A Courtyard) Joel ex-The Teddy Boys does his own sweet sunny pop thing. Now I’m itching for the summer to come back so I can put this on the stereo.

Squeegeed Clean Fake Sun Ra Bootleg Australian improv noise-jazz-prankster collective headed up by Skot Schtikla otherwise known for his involvement in/with Vocaularinist, TK Bollinger, and the operatic black/doom/gothic metal project Mekigah. Their second full-length, the first having been a reissue of two previous EPs, presents four extended pieces of madness. The sounds are a good analogue to the hyperactive collage cover art. If there’s a running theme, it would seem to have something to do with fake animals. The most Sun Ra-ish moment is the drifting space jazz wreckage that is “It’s Just A Placenta For An Artificial Dinosaur”; “Unexistant Sliming Rang” starts out with organ, electro drum machine, and moany vocals before spiraling off into la-la land becoming something akin to Can’s “Peking O.” I think the M.O. of this group is to record some jams, let the tapes sit a couple years, then break them back out and overdub more jam along to them. It’s unclear throughout which sounds are products of synthesizers, samplers, or regular instruments, and I really like it when that happens.

Anthrax Worship Music I am probably always going to love Anthrax no matter what they do, but this album is more than good enough that I don’t need to defend them. And it’s definitely exciting that Joey Belladonna is back. At their best, Anthrax excel at mixing heavy and catchy, and they definitely pull it off here.

Black Pyramid II The final word from Black Pyramid’s original lineup; epic battle doom packed with gorgeous long instrumental passages. This album is awesome, definitely a 2011 favorite. Reviewed it on The Bone Reader just the other day.

Looking forward to: Ufomammut

Asian Women On The Telephone Freedom As Mama Told Me Alien primitive triablish lengthy hypnotic psychedelic jams from Russia. Seems to be splitting the difference between Amon Düül and Godz. Weird fun, but holy shit these tracks meander semi-aimlessly for freaking ever. Sometimes that’s just what I’m up for, but I don’t know about this much of it all in one shot.

Wolves In The Throne Room Celestial Lineage 2011 was the year of the USBM backlash. By 2010, music nerds, always on the lookout for something fringe that their friends aren’t turned on to yet, had started digging into the dark world of black metal, and it caught on. Soon any extant band, especially stateside, working a strong black metal influence, was getting attention, and frequently slavering adoration, in places like Pitchfork, Stereogum, and NPR, thet is to say, “mainstream” outlets concerned with whatever’s trending, rather than being devoted specifically to metal. So naturally some time in the past year, the metal scene struck back, and, despite the fact that they’d already been at it for years, some Oregonians called Wolves In The Throne Room became, in the minds of certain die-hards, the acme of everything that was wrong with so-called “hipster black metal,” a movement accused of engaging with the genre on merely a superficial level, appropriating the sounds without understanding or properly buying into the ideas. It was 90′s punk rock all over again, and the pomposity of Liturgy only threw gas on the flames raging through blog comment threads everywhere.

In my opinion there are more appropriate targets of this derision. An overwhelming majority of metal sites acclaim this album and I hardly think all of them are being fooled at once. I really get the sense that Wolves’ engagement with the music and the mentality is about as sincere as is possible for a US band. I think their hearts are in the right place and rather than making music to hop on trends, they just try to make good music, and you can’t fault an artist for that motivation, though depending on the results, you can legitimately claim that they failed. An important part of Wolves’ ethic and mythos seems to have to do with nature and preservation of the environment and of old ways in the face of destructive modern threats, much as many Norwegian black metallers concerned themselves with preservation of what they saw as the authentic culture of their ancestral homeland against the threats of modern globalization historically rooted in the medieval imperialist spread of Christianity. Both perspectives are related to connection with the land, but this is of course going to seem shallower coming from Americans, a people occupying a land that is for them far less ancestral. Honestly I think if a really “true” American black metal is possible, it’s probably being made on the reservations. (Or it’s something like Ludicra’s excellent 2010 album The Tenant, substituting disconnection within the modern urban environment for connection with the primeval forest — but then there’s nothing specifically American about the city.)

Celestial Lineage is another ambitious work claiming to a unifying theme. In fact, it is reportedly the closing entry of a trilogy. It feels like a different kind of album from their earlier ones I’ve heard, though I’ve admittedly missed out on Black Cascade. One of the first sounds you hear on it is wind chimes. I mean really, wind chimes? To paraphrase John Darnielle (another prominent indie dude who’s been down with metal all along), wind chimes are extremely unbrutal; please keep it brutal.

Which is to say, laying aside “hipster black metal,” if this album is part of any current trends, it’s the one I’d call “pretty black metal.” Not that black metal hasn’t played with beauty before. The first time I listened to Celestial Lineage, I fell asleep. Which is not to say that it’s boring, so much as tranquil. It’s loud and epic-sounding, but moves magisterially — even when the drums are at full-on blastbeat (which isn’t a lot), the riffs and melodies are of a slower, drawn-out character, emphasizing that way that sufficiently fast playing can sound slow again (one of the few decent points that Liturgy guy made in his ponderous dissertation, but also something that just about any average slob who’s spent any amount of time listening to this kind of stuff could tell you). Other tracks and passages are at very slow tempos. The drums boom, and everything has that reverby symphonic feel; the out-front melodies, orchestral keyboard sounds, and Jessika Kenney’s operatic vocals all contribute to this feel. To be sure, Diadem Of 12 Stars sounded way more evil and scary.

It’s not all majesty, of course, these Wolves still bite (har har). There are still buzzsaw guitar tones and plenty of Nathan’s shrieking vocals, but it does feel somehow subdued and is tempered with all the sweet touches. I’m not sure it’s the amazing classic it’s being made out to be, but it’s quite good.

Krallice Diotima Another target of the aforementioned backlash was Krallice, the NYC group who in 2011 gave us Diotima. For whatever reason, extreme metal seems to gravitate towards extreme opinions. Any sufficiently interesting album, work, statement, has to be either life-changingly, mind-blowingly awesome, or to blame for the imminent eternal downfall of all that is heavy or cool. True to my style, I’m going to take the moderate path here and just say that Diotima is a fairly interesting album with some rewarding moments and some major annoyances.

Krallice’s style can sound exciting to people who are meeting this kind of thing for the first time. The intensity is impressive, even from the standpoint of technical endurance — holy shit they can tremolo-pick for twelve fucking minutes straight — but extended constant blasting can get monotonous real quick, which is where Krallice falls off for me. There’s often little in the way of dynamics or real moments, despite what seems like a mentally taxing level of complexity in compositional structure that sometimes seems like hyperactive riff-pasting, but occasionally does show some real attention to song development, especially on the title track.

Maybe it’s because I’m more of a doom guy or maybe it’s why I’m more of a doom guy but I like a riff that I can remember later. As it turns out, Krallice actually have a few of these on Diotima, just as they did on Dimensional Bleedthrough. The first half of the album indeed sounds a lot like more of the same kind of thing they did on the previous one. The second half works in slightly more old-school black metal feel. “Telluric Rings” even has a recognizable shreddy guitar solo. Unfortunately “Litany Of Regrets’ suffers from a terrible mix that causes each hit of the kick drum to rudely shove the guitars out of the frame, rendering the track nearly unlistenable.

Amebix Sonic Mass I think Amebix have always had epic ambitions, and it was only their modest means that kept them from being fully realized. I mean, on Arise you can hear the rust on the guitar strings. But you can hear in the songwriting that Amebix wanted to tell stories. Heroic stories. Even as godfathers of crust punk, Amebix were coming from a heavy metal mentality. On this comeback album with the drummer from STONE SOWAAAH the production values, and time allowed for focus and attention to detail, finally click with the vision. For a more thought-out perspective I defer to the good people at Trial By Ordeal.

Lo-Pan Salvador This slab of riff-rock got a lot of love over at The Obelisk. I’ve admittedly only listened to it once. It definitely rocks, and has a nice heavy sound, but it gets rather samey for me. I think all the songs are in the same key; multiple times a song literally starts on the same chord/note as the one before it ended on. Most are also in around the same tempo, with a slower one towards the end.

Red Fang Murder The Mountains – This is more like it. Hairy beer-swillin’ dudes with badass clever riffs and epic lyrics worked into songs that go places. High On Fire didn’t put out an album in ’11 and this might be the next best thing, but their sense of fun and affection for throwing in super icky distortion tones on the solos set them apart as their own thing. I had the great fortune to catch them live here in Des Moines and they did in no wise disappoint. I’m surprised not to see this on more 2011 lists, actually.

Bloodiest Descent All Bruce Lamont does is win. This one definitely ends up on the list. I was hearing praise for it all over the place, then I saw some web site was giving away a copy in a drawing so I entered it and won. End up corresponding with the guy who runs the site, he checks out Centipede Farm, and next thing I know I’m writing reviews for The Bone Reader. Even laying aside the bonus points this album gets for the story I have with it, it’s mind-blowing. I wrote a full review here somewhere so I’ll defer to my earlier words to explain what I love about it.

Bruce Lamont Feral Songs For The Epic Decline – Speaking of Bruce Lamont. This is a gorgeously dark and inventive album definitely worth hearing, though some of it now in hindsight feels like rough-sketches for some of the moods and concepts of Bloodiest. Still neat as shit though.
Bruce Lamont “Feral Songs For The Epic Decline” by At A Loss Recordings

Marax The Weight of Insignificance – Marax is another of my new discoveries in 2011 as I somehow got contacted my Mr. Crowe to do a split 3″ CD-R with him. I have copies of same for sale or trade. A very prolific noise artist, Marax had several releases this year, many of them of very extended length and released in the form of free downloads. This one is an ultraminimalist two-part piece: in the first part he plays a low hum and static through a wah pedal for 49 minutes and 8 seconds; in the second he uses the first as source material and gives it more layers through additional effects and post-processing, for another 49 minutes and 8 seconds. This probably sounds like an absolute nightmare to listen to for most of you, but I jammed it in my headphones at work and enjoyed it very much, ominous yet tranquil. Given the right opportunity I would dim the lights, put this on the stereo, and just zone out to it. The noise of my upstairs neighbors’ kids stomping around and loud cars taking off from the apartment complex across the street would probably meld into it and become much less annoying.
link

Rwake Rest – Another of my big favorites in the metal category this year, and one of the releases I reviewed for The Bone Reader, a literally apocalyptic doom concept album of downright frightening intensity.

The Wounded Kings In the Chapel of the Black Hand – I volunteered to review this one for The Bone Reader just because I was just excited for a new Wounded Kings album. Breaking in a new lineup and new lead vocalist, Steve Mills and company added extra tunefulness to their gloomy atmosphere and came up with a big winner that has brought them a lot of new attention.

Thunder Bunny …There Is A Gate – Just reviewed this a few posts ago, go check that out.

The Seed Of Something s/t cassette – Des Moines teen garage-indie underdog heartthrobs finally bust out a recording and it’s exactly as raw and enthusiastic as you’d want it.

Richard Buckner Our Blood – After a long absence which we come to find out that the in-progress album suffered various disasters and restarts, Richard Buckner puts out something that appeared to somehow manage to appeal to both sides of his divided fanbase, that is, those who preferred his earlier country-oriented sounds and those who get down with the more rock-oriented direction since his hooking up with Merge Records. It’s neither a departure nor a return to form exactly. Though personally I could have used a couple more of the driving tunes that propel his previous couple of Merge releases, it’s the pure minimalist melodic beauty, Buckner’s real calling card, that this album makes its case on and succeeds.

SubRosa No Help For The Mighty Ones – Intriguing stuff — culty doom metal with electric violins and foresty female vocal harmonies. 7 longish maestoso-tempo songs and one a capella traditional. The harmonies and violin parts are tonally off-kilter at times, making for a strange alien feel, while elsewhere they’re gorgeously consonant. It lulls in spots but in others is absolutely beautiful.

Mutwawa Necro Zulu – Yep, Mutwawa had another release in ’11.

The Implicit Order Supernatural Folk Tales – chilly ambience from deconstructed samples (some more deconstructed than others). Indistinct bits of music and voices melding into a sort of industrial edge-of-reality feeling. This is far from the only release by this outfit this year, though: these guys churn this stuff out by the case.

Across Tundras Sage – Kyuss’s desert gigs may be the stuff of legend but in my opinion it takes more than just sounding kinda like Kyuss to deserve the tag “desert rock.” Across Tundras get the desert vibe down on here, by mixing some of the sort of dusty tonalities common to latter-day Earth in with the riffs, among other tricks: a couple minutes into the first song I figured I was just in for another groovy doom album with cool rambling psychedelic basslines, then suddenly this quick-stomping country-western section came in, with horns! I’ve heard some truly bad attempts to mix country bits into heavy music (Blood Cult comes to mind) but this isn’t one of them, it fits. As far as rock music evoking the desert goes, this is easily up there with the likes of Diesto and Las Cruces. I’m not even sure how this ended up on my iPod in the first place, and I had no idea these guys had so much stuff out, but I’m glad I gave it a spin. “Hijo Del Desierto”‘s call for “water, cool, clear water” is especially headsticky.

Opiate First Document – any real appreciation of “power electronics” is a new thing for me if I have indeed managed to achieve such. On this EP these guys make pretty good use of their enveloping, crushing masses of distortion, varying the tone and throwing in a few squiggly synths and drums for variety, to deliver their message of tearing it all down, burning it, and pissing on the ashes. A seemingly improvised, unstructured variation of old-school political hardcore “rage at all the bullshit” vocals gives you an idea where they’re coming from mentally when you can make out the words in snatches. This is some seriously pissed off shit.

Cop Bar No Justice Just Law – Trashy, crusty lo-fi grind/hardcore as fronted by the living legend Samuel Locke-Ward. As fun and badass as this is I can’t help feeling that their next release will blow it to pieces.

Ron Mexico s/t download EP – Iowa dirtball hip-hop legend otherwise known as Cracka Don, T-Nutz, or Sperm Bank Hank, tosses out six very brief tracks as yet another alter-ego. More hilarious swaggering raps about crack-smoking and dogfights.

The Mighty Accelerator Soccer Mom EP – A different set of Iowa dirtballs debut with riff-rock inspired by early Def Leppard.

Curmudgeon Human Ouroboros cassette/download EP – Ugly-ass sludgecore. Nothing mindblowing but a good time.

The Bassturd The Dark Side Of The Turd – The Bassturd bows out in grand style on his final album of epic synth-driven rabble-rousing Devo-meets-hip-hop-isms.

Ydestroyde Synzosizer – Old-school Japanese sci-fi sensory-overload electro-noise-rock in the vein of Space Streakings and classic Boredoms. Hell of a good album. With Boredoms having since gone all mellow on us (not that I’m complaining), it’s nice to still have this kind of thing around. I totally missed out the US tour, it had Midwest dates even, and I even tried at the last minute to help get a Des Moines date lined up but I was too late. Maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll do another.

Wreck and Reference Black Cassette EP – Debut recording, lo-fi (probably self-released), from a duo making doomy post-rock with no guitars, just drums and a sampler. This got a lot of love this year too, enough that I think it even got a vinyl reissue. It’s heavy and very different. The last track reminds me a bit of Vulturum.

Looking forward to in 2012: Black Pyramid II; Ember Schrag The Sewing Room; Cop Bar/Captain 3 Leg split, Napalm Death, Neurosis?