Warsaw - An Ideal For Killing (1977-79 - Icy cold minimilist punk: Joy Divison, Crime)

Pre-Joy Division, pre-pre-New Order band featuring guitarist Bernard Albrecht, bassist Peter Hook, drummer Steve Brotherdale, and of course lost soul vocalist Ian Curtis.

Admittedly, I'm not much a fan Joy Division or and less of New Order, but these earlier dirt-raw demo made before the band would change its name (another band called Warsaw Pakt would force the name change) are pretty exciting.

Not at all hi-fi but for this sound, the desperate grit and grim of sounding like it were recorded in a post-apocalyptic fall out shelter often benefits the band sounding colder and crueler than most of their contemporaries.

Yes this low-fi aesthetic also means that at other times the sound it irritating and grating but that is usually on the more melodic tracks like "At A Later Date," while the more atonal tracks like "The Kill" or the paranoid-schizophrenic tracks with a jittery one-line guitar lead like "Novelty" push the bands sound into a harsh avant-guard territory.

Formed in Manchester, England following the performance of The Sex Pistols (the Buzzcocks come from the same scene) Warsaw's basement level unforgiving sound show how much fun The Sex Pistols were having kicking up their racket. Warsaw, by contrast, don't sound like their having fun at all, but are instead compelled by a possession of fuck-it worthlessness.

Stand out tacks are easily "Walked In Line," "Ice Age," and "Warsaw." Once again I'm not a big enough fan of their later bands to know if many of these songs appear on their later releases but at least some of them do, albeit in significantly less raw punk skinned-knees form.

Seriously if you like first wave punk at all then this is worth owning simply for the track "Walked In Line" alone.

- overview by denez
Tracklist:

1. Inside The Line
2. Gutz
3. At A Later Date
4. The Kill
5. You're No Good For Me
6. At A Later Date (live)
7. Novelty
8. Warsaw
9. No Love Lost
10. Leaders of Men
11. Failures
12. Ice Age
13. Walked In Line
14. The Kill (2)
    

168 kbps, ripped from vinyl.

You can't really buy this anywhere easily 'cuz its a bootleg from 2002 released in Spanish Galaor Records SK 92037. There was an (I believe) official release of much of this material available here.

OTHERWISE, CHECK IN THE COMMENTS PAGE!!!!!! AND LEAVE A COMMENT YOU SLOPPY MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!

Aphrodite's Child - 666 (1970-2 - psych/prog weirdo pop/cult music)

I'll admit that there are several themes that, though cheesy and juvenile, will get me every time - namely references to L.S.D, naked girls, and Satan. Psych-garage songs that allude to LSD (ex. The Pretty Things "L.S.D.") I will by instantly, same goes with metal/hard rock albums that refer to Satanism (ex. Venom's "Welcome to Hell"), and, well pretty much anything with naked girls (Herb Alpert's and the Tijuana Brass' "Wiped Cream and Other Delights").

So, yes, it is under this line of thinking that I purchased this landmark album by Greek prog rockers Aphrodite's Child. But instead of the heavy doomy proto-metal prog that I had expected, "666 - The Apocalypse of John, 13/18" is something very different.

A concept album that that crosses two LP's, "666" really doesn't sound like any other album I've heard before. Some of the tacks are sort of "concept filler" but most of them are interesting like the first track "The System" which is just a repeated chanting of "We've got a system to fuck the system" before slamming into the upbeat rhythm-centered rocker "Babylon."

Other times these interludes show themselves for the space filler that they are with mantras, poetry, sound effects. These can get excessive but they do paint a interesting and moody atmosphere for the album.

Overall the album is much more up-beat than I expected, and even featuring several pop-oriented songs, but don't get me wrong taken as whole this album is as far out and into left-field as they come. Quiet cult-moaning ragas will run head first into wild peddle-to-the-metal acid rockers and then will follow up with a free-jazz sax interlude before mutating into a danceable prog-funk.

I'm having a difficult time describing the music here, so I'll just let it speak for itself. The bands main composer,Vangelis Papathanassiou would later pen the main theme song to Chariots of Fire and probably made more money than he did while in this band.

- overview by denez


Tracklist:

1. The System
2. Babylon
3. Loud, Loud, Loud
4. The For Horsemen
5. The Lamb
6. The Seventh Seal
7. Aegian Sea
8. Seven Bowls
9. The Wakening Beast
10. Lament
11. The Marching Beast
12. The Battle of the Locusts
13. Do It
14. Tibulation
15. The Beast
16. Ofis
17. Seven Trumpets
18. Altamont
19. The Wedding of the Lamb
20. The Capture of the Beast
21. (infinity)
22. Hic and Nunc
23. All the Seats Were Occupied
24. Break

168 kbps, ripped from vinyl.

Buy this album right here and you'll thank me for it.

...but you might want to look under the hood first:
http://rapidshare.com/files/8562958/Aphrodites_Child.rar

sorry i've been gone....

Should I even bother?Hay, so I've been busy with school but now that I'm on break, I'll have some time for this blog again. Obviously I've got a ton of new stuff, but I'm just wondering if anyone is even still out there? The last few months the only comments I've been getting are junk spam that I haven't even bothered to delete. I've also noticed that some of my personal fave music blogs out there have shut down, but now I'm noticing a whole new generation have cropped up...

So what do you guys think? I'd like to have a bit more communication with the people who frequent this blog, so lets start by working up my motivation and leaving me some comments here that let me know if returning is even worth wild... or even any human beings are even out there reading this bull shit.

keep it real,
-denez