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.

Until a few months ago I’d been seeing House Of Bricks as one of those bar/venues in decline, you know the ones that seem to book mostly the same has-been/also-ran folks repeatedly. This is the place that seemed proud of the fact that Green Jello still played there, after all. It did have some things going for it, though. For one, they have pretty good food. When I first came to Des Moines I worked a couple blocks away and would occasionally go there for lunch when I was feeling the need for something a little bit coma-inducing to be washed down with a beer. Also, they did seem to manage to bring in some fairly current metal acts, though usually none of the sort I was interested in.

Of late, the place seems on a comeback. I began to take notice when I went there for the Red Fang show a few months back. Then recently the place started showing more and more evidence of a pretty major remodel, which seems to be oriented towards adding an upper level or perhaps rooftop patio. And, it turns out, Fetal Pig has had a few pretty good gigs there lately. We even got paid for most of them, which I guess hasn’t been the case for any gig Dan had done there in several years. This is, of course, a function of turnout, and a lot of things play into making that happen. Also the staff have been very cool and friendly, the sound system is quality, and the sound man, even though he consistently shows up late and appears pretty blasé about his work, obviously knows what he’s doing and always gets a really good sound. Some recent experiences there have been fun enough to make the atmosphere of certain recent Mews trips look downright depressing in comparison.

I was unsure of how the abrasive dirty slash-and-burn grind of Cop Bar would go over, which is probably why we, or somebody (I don’t know what degree of input Dan had) hedged the bet on the bill a little bit and got Love Songs For Lonely Monsters, an up and coming local band that’s well liked and joins melodic pop-punk songwriting to bracing textural guitar sounds and light prog touches. This made for a bill with a nice variety to it, and to my delight, everything was met with enthusiasm from a sizable and lively crowd of diverse ages and appearances.

Cop Bar had just freshly assembled (literally they were slipping them into covers and writing on the discs with Sharpies there in the venue before the show started) their newest release, a split 3″ CD-R with Captain 3 Leg. Each band plays six songs in a little over four and a half minutes per band, ending with a track consisting of all the other songs layered over each other, and each section receiving an introduction from Joe Jack Talcum announcing the next band over squirrely Casio music, and all wrapped up in cover art by Manhorse. C3L are up first with recordings rebuilt from newly unearthed drum tracks from an aborted circa-2000 recording session. They have noticeably more of a death metal influence in the riffs and guitar tone than do the crustier sounding Cop Bar, who here extend much the same thing as on No Justice Just Law except perhaps with even more incomprehensible vocals. It all goes by in a bit of a blur but it’s plenty worth the three bucks. For the show Sam wore some kind of plush Godzilla head and threw his microphone around and was an all-around madman. His performing style, plus the short songs and funny song titles, seemed to win the place over easily.

I don’t remember whether Fetal Pig played next or Love Songs For Lonely Monsters did. It was I think my third time seeing them and they’ve come along way from the first one which was at DG’s in Ames opening for We Are Country Mice (who I guess are just called Country Mice now) with Why Make Clocks in the middle. One thing about LS4LM is they have quite a lot of sound, what with the combination of Nick Park’s ‘gazey use of guitar effects (a prominent feature he also brings to Wolves In The Attic) and Justin Neuenschwander’s 12-string. Add to that that lead singer Amy Badger sometimes playes a third guitar or a flute and Justin sometimes throws down some keyboards, it’s not hard to imagine that their sound could get muddy if the room or PA or sound guy isn’t the best, but this show and the last that I saw of them (at Gas Lamp, a much smaller stage and room) they’ve managed to sound nice and clear, whereas at DG’s they seemed to be new and still getting the kinks worked out. Sam dug them too. They have a split cassette EP with Iowa City electronic pop trio Datagun out which is really good, especially if you like tape hiss. Or they did anyway; they might be sold out of them by now.

Cop Bar headed up the road to Ames where they played the following night at The Space. Opening the set was Human Satan, an improvisational duo made up of Nate Lodgson on trumpet, and a drummer. It seemed a tad self-indulgent and tossed-off but they only played for about fifteen minutes so whatever. I think I drank a beer in the parking lot. Cop Bar did a pretty similar show to what they’d done at House Of Bricks but to the smaller room and crowd who dug it just as much.

CM4KT, from DeKalb, IL, were new to me despite that apparently they’re part of the GetLoFi circuit-bending community that includes the Ring Toss Twins who were on that show Brian and Ember had me up to Decorah for. In the center was a combination drummer and player of colorful circuit-bent toys and gizmos set up on shelves above his kick drum. His ability to keep the beat going while manipulating the various dials and buttons in front of him between drum hits was quite impressive. The guitarist had some homebrew electronic modifications to his guitar along with some interesting pedals and toys he held up to the pickups. I’d say their appeal went beyond just the novelty of seeing them use weird gear, though, which is a refreshing thing to be able to say about this kind of act. The gadgets added a layer of interesting psychedelic noise and whimsy over a foundation of raw primitive blues-rock. They had a recording for sale that was available only as an audio-only VHS tape, I can’t imagine they’re managing to sell many of those. I think most peoples’ VCRs bit the dust years ago and it’s near impossible to buy a new one now. (3″ CD-Rs are bad enough, the only player/drive I have that will take them is on my wife’s computer.) Their other merch item was contact microphones made out of bottle caps, which they’re currently doing a tour of hackerspaces down south, giving workshops on how to build them.

Longshadowmen wrapped up the night with another Longshadowmen show. They’re remarkably consistent so far as I’ve seen this lineup. How to describe them? Raw electric blues played loud as fuck and dripping with off-the-grid paranoia over hypnotically repetitive chord progressions and Matt Dake’s avant-jazz drum flourishes. It was announced to be Matt’s last show on drums for them, though, as he has other projects he’s looking to devote more energy to. I’m curious what those are, The Jerkles do seem to be doing more gigs than usual lately.

Next Fetal Pig went to Ottumwa to play the Music Union Hall, a DIY venue in the upper floor of the Green Street Hall Mall, an old building in Ottumwa which the Bolingers and crew bought up to house various ventures such as the Flipside piercing shop and a cool horror movie shop called Insane’s Asylum. (I bought a used CD of Morbid Angel’s Altars Of Madness for five bucks.) They also host various sorts of events in this open upper floor area, many of them related to their International Video Game Hall Of Fame. These guys are a big piece of what’s making Ottumwa cool these days, besides all the musicians. This actually turned out to be one of our coolest shows in a while, cool enough for Jeff to declare “no more bars!” When we arrived there was some sort of video game fest going on and we met a guy who saw Fetal Pig in Iowa City circa ’94 and was really excited that the band was still around, then after load-in we met Andy and Sandy and Troy for some dinner.

Broken Point Of View came on first, they were all right if you like stuff like Shinedown as much as they do. Their guitars were all run direct to the PA through Pods or something. Not really my kind of thing but the place was nicely full and people were getting really into everything, dancing around and generally having a great time. Even Spooty, the proprietor, was in good spirits despite his considerable duties coordinating and overseeing and cleaning up. Early on during Broken Point Of View’s set I perchanced to wander the neighborhood a bit in search of a cash machine, and found live music happening in no less than two other places within a couple blocks of the show — one a nearby bar where some young fellows were covering some Skynrd, and the other an Eagles hall or something of that sort where through the wall from the sidewalk I could hear some good ole boys (and gals) doing old country-western classics. I’ve told you before that Ottumwa’s got it going on.

The Mighty Accelerator were on next and the party was in full swing. The guitar leads Andy has been obligated to take on since Travis moved away he pulled off, less flashy but much better than I’d expected given how worried about them he’d claimed to be. Fetal Pig played. North To The Future were less country and more hard rockin’ than they sound on the EP but recognizably the same great songs. A+ gig, would play there again.

Last weekend’s gig at Gabe’s in Iowa City definitely seemed to be promoted as a metal show. That seems to work all right for Fetal Pig, though. Still, if this was a metal show, it was of that metal fringe scene that I dig. Metal is catching on with post-hardcore “indie” rockers who can’t quite get down with the “chill” or hippie vibes of indie shit these days and always preferred the harder edge that “alternative” forms of guitar rock had in decades past, and it’s an interesting phenomenon for both good and ill. I get the impression that that’s kind of where we fit in, and also where this show was coming from, and the show was a winner all the way through.

Starting things off was 100° Centipede, no relation. This was their first show, and as I understand it the lead singer is a longtime well known and well liked figure around the Iowa City music scene, though this is his first crack at performing. He and his band were a boatload of metallic scuz-rock fun, though. For an idea where they’re coming from, they have a song about a certain Nick the Prick, a reference that will be caught by anyone who’s hung around Iowa City enough at certain times in the past 20 years or so.

Fetal Pig were scheduled second due to expectations that some of The Mighty Acceleratör would be arriving late, but it turned out that they made it on time after all. The crowd did thin a tad after our set but was still respectable (it was quite large to begin with, I think a lot of people in town were excited about 100° Centipede) and had lost nothing in enthusiasm. Acceleratör’s performance was a bit unusual among the sets I’ve seen so far by them, in that it was a bit looser, even a bit sloppy, and Joe played a much more raucous frontman than usual, getting out in front and engaging with the audience, something Dan and I had both been wishing he’d do a bit more of. Dan turned to me during the set and said he’d got the idea that they’re going for a bit of a Murder Junkies thing.

Los Voltage sounded pretty neat though I mainly hung out manning the merch during their set. Kind of an old-school hardcore punk sound with some exaggerated guitar delay effects. Loud. Cop Bar was maybe even a little more unhinged than what I’d seen before, perhaps for the hometown crowd; Andy characterized it afterwards as like an excellent spoof of grindcore, which, let’s face it, is pretty silly music, though that’s no reason not to enjoy it. It’s those grindcore bands most willing to laugh at themselves that he and I seem to like best anyway.

The other night we went to Ames to play at The Space and got to hang out with Nathan Thrailkill, who did all our awesome artwork for the record and was in town that night. It was a low-key show and maybe we were too loud for the tight little corner of the room we were set up in but nobody complained. Forget the Times, from Chicago, opened it up as a three-piece of two guitars and a drummer doing improvised noise rock that was in similar territory to early Wrong but with a bit more post-rock groove, though I thought I maybe detected a bit of Dead C inspiration in there too. A didgeridoo was employed at some point, apropos of nothing in particular. They jammed continuously for about 20 minutes and personally, I could have used another ten or twenty because I was enjoying it. One of the guitar players runs a label called Already Dead Tapes and they had a wide assortment of recorded material for sale on cassette, offering a special of three tapes for $10 so I got both Forget The Times tapes plus one of nice meditative synth drones by somebody named Kyle Landstra. Forget The Times have an LP out too but I’m still in process of scraping together cash for a working turntable on which to play the records I already have. Donations happily accepted. They have it up on their bandcamp though so maybe I’ll snag a download sometime.

I don’t like to toot my own horn as you can tell by the lack of details I’m providing about our sets at these shows, but the crowd response to us has been really positive and exciting when I’ve been able to process it. It feels weird being in a band people like this much for a change. I want to sincerely thank everyone who came out to these shows, especially the ones that made those cheering noises.

Recent interesting acquisitions: A 3″ CD-R called Under The Cloud of Sleep by someone calling themselves Du Hexen Hase. No contact info on the package. #45 of 47. One 17-minute spaced out improvised track of electronic washes and minimal guitar. Cover art is a photo of emu against an overcast sky. No idea when it came out. And some very cool Earwigs stuff I’ll jabber more about later.

I’ve been saying for a while that as music scenes go, Ottumwa (in conjunction with its surrounding smaller communities) is an undiscovered gem. It’s a pretty nondescript, not particularly large town that you might otherwise overlook, and yet it’s the area that gave birth to The Eggnogs and since then has brought us Samuel Locke-Ward, She Swings She Sways, North To The Future, The War I Survived, Grand Old Lady, A Well Dressed Man, and for a time contributed a drummer to The Slats. And that’s before I even get into what Andy Koettel has been up to for the past couple decades.

Andy is a kind of musician that I also am, the kind whose ever-shifting interests lead him down a wide range of artistic tangents and diverse projects. For many years he ran the Mortville label, specializing in noisecore, avant-grind, and tardcore, in conjunction with his on-again-off-again band Captain 3 Leg, one of the most artistically adventurous and most fun bands ever to appear on the noisecore-grindcore scene, who have themselves experimented extensively with electronics, instrumentals, progressive rock, and sludge, no doubt frustrating grind/metal purists to no end and reveling in any backlash it got them.

A big part of my theory on why Ottumwa grows so much good, if often overlooked, music has to do with just the kind of town it is. If you’re from a place like Ottumwa (or even Waterloo or Cedar Falls), and you stay there, then if you keep on playing music, then you have to be in it purely for the love of music itself. Because those who are looking for money or fame or respect out of it eventually move to a city that’s either bigger (NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle) or hipper (Chapel Hill, Olympia). And no disrespect to anyone who goes that route, because it’s still a hard road and you’re likely to still need that love of music to keep you motivated even then. But the people left making music in the smaller towns and cities with less of a mass-media profile are people who could really give a fuck, and as you might expect, some really interesting music can come out of that if the creative atmosphere is right. Hell, Seattle wasn’t always the Seattle we know today. Remember when the grunge blowup happened in the early ’90s, early reactions were “Seattle who?”

The Mighty Acceleratör, which also features Ottumwa math teacher and workhorse drummer Jared Merle, a.k.a. “J-Rod” a.k.a. “Grandy” a.k.a. “J. Redcorn”, who relocated to Des Moines as recently as a couple weeks ago, and Centerville guitarist, recording engineer, and Strangebird Studio proprietor Travis Atkinson who is soon to pack up his 2″ tape machine and relocate to Nashville, originally got started some years ago, then disappeared for a bit while Andy and bassist Stephen Crow went off on an instrumental doom/sludge-metal tangent with Billy Crystal Meth (not to be confused with a certain dude from Chicago who, after stumbling onto the same name, went so far as to steal a logo from one of this Billy Crystal Meth’s CD covers). Earlier this year Acceleratör reconvened, adding Atkinson and new lead vocalist Joe Brown.

So what’s The Mighty Acceleratör’s tangent? Stated quite simply it’s just good old party-hardy rock and roll. This is riffy, beer-swillin’, don’t think too hard music. It’s been described as a ’70s throwback, but really this kind of stuff has never fallen out of favor in the blue-collar towns of middle-America since that decade. If you already know of these guys and the extreme, indie, and art-rock stuff in their pasts and on their shelves, it may come as a shock to hear them working this style, and maybe even more of a shock to hear them do it this well and authentically. But for as big of music nerds as they are, these have always been a set of unpretentious dudes, and from the Soccer Mom EP and a couple live sets I’ve seen, it’s evident that they didn’t go down this route to slum it; they may love their Can and Yo La Tengo records, but their affection for this lowbrow material is equally genuine. It’s a kind of appreciation that maybe you have to be from one of those middle-America towns to really understand. Cheap beer and people you’ve been around all your life make for good times, after all. If you don’t believe me, just listen to “Shake It.”

I’ve already given this release more paragraphs than it has songs, and so far it’s mainly been expository material, but basically if you’re capable of coming down off your high horse to just rock out, there’s no good reason not to like this EP. The playing is tight but just loose enough; the guitar riffs are catchy and Atkinson’s leads are familiar but fiery; the lyrics are packed with the kind of humor everybody in the bar can get. The opening/title track is an amusing portrait of a borderline creepy obsession with the titular character; “Mustache Foam” warns of the dangers of mixing facial hair with draft beer when it comes to attracting the ladies; “Droppin’ A Load” is an honest to goodness trucker song. When was the last time you heard of somebody writing a trucker song? It’s about fucking time.

The second episode of Metal Up Your Tap: Des Moines Chapter was this past Friday. It’s a pretty cool event, but it does get me thinking about what defines “metal” these days. The term seems to have gotten looser than it once was. For instance, recently the organizers seemed to be trying to get Fetal Pig to open next month’s episode being headlined by Nachtmystium. I guess Dan wasn’t into the idea. I’d have been up for it, but I’m up for a lot of crazy shit if it has to do with music. Also, by the way, kudos for snagging Nachtmystium.

Anyway there’s no disputing Druids’s doom/sludge metal cred once you hear them. I like that they switch it up with a few fast songs, which makes them more varied than the typical stonery outfit. They had a bassist this time, that was new. But welcome, since it opened things up for Luke to do more guitar solos. Some really good new songs in the set.

On second was The Mighty Acceleratör, from Ottumwa, and this is the second part of my point about the fluidity of the term “metal” these days. Acceleratör play a kind of 70s throwback riff-rock, intentionally exercising little or no Sabbath influence, with songs about drinking beer, ogling women, and driving trucks. I observed that the crowd thinned out slightly for their set, but only slightly, and the people in the place were not just respectful but actually pretty enthusiastic. Accelerator’s brand of hard rock is all fun and no bullshit, but is it metal? Well if metal fans are into it, why not? Certain metalheads will also staunchly proclaim their love of Aerosmith’s Rocks, or Rainbow, after all. Plus, Andy’s guitar tone does sound almost exactly like that on Napalm Death’s From Enslavement To Obliteration — or did, as since the show he’s purchased another amp. He also used to run one of the most extreme grindcore/noisecore labels around and brought along what’s left of his distro to the show. And, The Mighty Acceleratör’s ranks include the drummer of Grand Old Lady and A Well Dressed Man.

Heaving Mass, from Chicago, gave us a solid set of heavy head-nodding midtempo power-trio doom riffage reminiscent of Crowbar and a little bit of Sleep but also with a bit of that southern feel. This was definitely shaping up to be MUYT’s “doom edition.” They also have the flyest looking t-shirts I’ve ever seen offered at a $10 price point, a gorgeous multi-color design, and if you bought one you got their CD free.

Finally, Skin Of Earth was the big surprise to me. I’m told they’re local but had never heard of them before, but heard people tell me things like “last time I saw these guys it was eight years ago.” They brought their own lighting in the form of one low-wattage floor lamp, providing an ambience that transformed the Mews into a basement show. They played epic, crushing instrumentals with lots of apocalyptic atmosphere. I’m kind of a sucker for this type of thing. That whole supposed post-rock/metal hybrid that gets called “post-metal”, I guess, but I got the feeling these guys didn’t set out to start a “post-metal band” so much as they got together and started playing/writing and this is just what came out. Anyway I don’t know what kind of scene these guys play in but I want in on it.

I’m also long overdue to write a little something about the Joe Jack Talcum show. Zach was looking a little worse for the wear many days into a tour plagued with automotive breakdowns and injuries. He did a more rock-focused one-man Coolzey set with a lot of guitar including a couple nice blues-inflected numbers, and brought up a couple of his tourmates for his classic “Old Machine.” Dan B claimed he was tired too but you definitely couldn’t tell it from The Bassturd’s set. The Samuel Locke-Ward Lo-Fi Spectacular featured Jeff Mannix on guitar, Zach on bass (which I have to say, he can really play the hell out of!) and a drum machine.

Christopher The Conquered took the unorthodox route of performing in the Mews’s foyer on an upright piano, accompanied only by Kate Kennedy on saxophone. It was an unusually low-key and intimate performance for a CtC show but went over well with those who were around for it, having a very piano-bar vibe. I was worried however as it seemed like the crowd had thinned out a lot and I really wanted Joe Jack to have a good crowd to play for.

Fortunately, such a crowd appeared. I don’t know if they started filtering in from the DJ set just ending at the Mews’s outdoor “PBR Bar” or what, but suddenly there were a lot of people around rocking out to Joe Jack Talcum And The Powders. The Powders, made up of Sam Locke-Ward on keys, Grace Locke-Ward on drums, and Rachel Feldman on bass, make a darn fine backup band for both Joe Jack’s post-Dead Milkmen tunes and the Dead Milkmen covers sprinkled into the set, some requested by the audience. In response to one showgoer’s shouts for “Nutrition,” the band gave it an off-the-cuff shot having never played it before. If they messed it up any, none of the people shouting along seemed to mind.

After the main JJT/Powders set, Joe Jack stuck around onstage for two solo acoustic encores of requests of Dead Milkmen songs, and seemed to be having a good time. It was overall one of the more fun shows I’ve been to in a while.