Tag Archive | Music

My annual top-20

Billede

Oh yes, another year has flown, and I have made my annual list of albums I have taken particular pleasure in during the year. Note, this is not a complete nor particularly accurate list. Here are some oldies and some newbies. I have decided only to have one release by any band in the list – if not, I would have four Napalm Death releases more here… This is also published on http://www.kusarigamakill.com the blog of my band.

The list goes as follows:

  1. Intense Degree – War in My Head (1989)
  2. Mumakil – Flies Will Starve (2013)
  3. Pig Destroyer – Book Burner (2012)
  4. Satanic Malfunctions – Them (2013)
  5. Converge – All We Love We Leave Behind (2012)
  6. Blockheads (FR) – This World Is Dead (2013)
  7. Iron Lung – Life. Iron Lung. Death. (2004)
  8. Noisear – Subvert the Dominant Paradigm (2011)
  9. Scab Cadillac – Tagged & Numbered… (1989)
  10. Napalm Death – Utilitarian (2012)
  11. Coffins – The Fleshland (2013)
  12. Carcass – Surgical Steel (2013)
  13. Sete Star Sept – Visceral Tavern (2013)
  14. Repulsion – Horrified (1989)
  15. Jesus of Nazareth / Exploding Meth Lab – The Seed Mouth Collection (2008)
  16. Cloud Rat – Moksha (2013)
  17. Nashgul – Humanicidio (2007)
  18. Realized – 21st Century Terminal World (2005)
  19. Death Toll 80k – Harsh Realities (2011)
  20. Amon Amarth – Twilight of the Thunder God (2008)
Well, 1989 seems to have been a strong year music wise…
 
Anyway, glædelig jul, og godt nytår!

Instigators – New Old Now

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Ah. This is a gem. I love Instigators. My old chum Kenneth introduced me to them in the late 1980’s. He had a great deal of communication with the singer Andy Turner. I think I remember this lp is re-recordings of old material, to be released in Brazil?

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Instigators – New Old Now on Discogs:
http://www.discogs.com/Instigators-New-Old-Now/release/2878178

Wikipedia about Instigators:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instigators

I love the cover. Go Fatty!

Sweet Tooth – Soft White Underbelly

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Here we have one of Justin Broadrick’s more obscure releases. Released in 1990 and sounding a lot like Head Of David’s Dustbowl with a punkier edge. It might be a paranthesis in JK’s massive output, but I like it anyway. It has a more organic feel than Godflesh, but with the same industrial heaviness and deep sense of desolation. It reminds me of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s novel The Mote In God’s Eye, especially the sentence: “The industrial ugliness of the endless cityscape”.

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Dave Cochran who plays bass and sings was the founder(?) of Head Of David, and Scott Kiehl the drummer was in Slab.
Read more about that fine novel here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God’s_Eye

And about the record here:
http://www.discogs.com/Sweet-Tooth-Soft-White-Underbelly/release/387193

Helmet – Meantime

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Wow, it’s 21 years ago this monster of an lp surfaced. I saw the video for Unsung, and was blown to bits by its crushing heavyness and catchy riff.

I lived in a basement at the time, with my girlfriend Lisa, we were unemployed and out of cash, there was far between the record store visits. But I knew I had to get this one.

The release of Betty was yet another good experience music wise, and I guess I actually like Betty better than Meantime. But as I listen to it now, I’m reminded of the long borng pre-internet days in the basement with Lisa, where much of the entertainment came from visits from my buddy Heine, and our getting drunk in cheap beer and on one occasion cough syrup…

Later on I developed a profound hatred to Helmet, as I saw them as one of the reasons for the development of Nü-Metal (may it burn in Hell). And for many moons my Helmet records lay untouched.

But now I’m at peace with Mr. Hamilton et al. And it is good to have a spin of the old Interscope wax from 21 years ago.

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http://www.discogs.com/Helmet-Meantime/release/1836557

Napalm Death – Utilitarian

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My love affair with Napalm Death began in the summer of 1987. My brother had gotten hold of a cassette with Scum on one side, and some Septic Death on the other.

Need I say I was blown to bits? It was – and possibly will be for ever – the most intense musical experience of my life.

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As I sit here in my comfy couch, 42 years old, pudgy around the waist and with a severe case of receding hair line, listening to Utilitarian by a band with the same name, but with no band member left from the recording of Scum, I am somehow brought in sync with that skinny long haired wannabe-crusty I was all those years ago.

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Scum is now older than Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was back the…That in it self is mindblowing and terrible, on the other hand, getting older isn’t as bad as the leeches in fashion and botox industry wants you to believe. And here is one of the many reasons for my contiuing love for Napalm Death. They have aged too, they have fat bellies and are going bald, but the mind reminds the same – or the essence of the mind does. Surely we are all wiser than those dirty long haired punks we were back in ’87. But I am still angry. Angry at greedy businessmen – sharks in suits – who neglect basic human decency and respect for life and our planet, in favor of a fucking irrelevant buck.

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That anger and the following impulse to act differently than Nestlé and Monsanto wants us to, is the reason why Napalm Death will always be so much more relevant than The Beatles.

Maybe this isn’t very sophisticated or even very interesting, but to me listening to Napalm Death and getting my hopes up for a better world is a big deal.

Peace and love, make noise not war…