Tossing Guerrillas Gets Me All Sedimental

Holy shit. I thought I'd sit down with the new split LP Kicked Back Into The Crypt outta Sophomore Lounge for some late-night grooves - and can't stop the bleeding. Is there such a thing as a gleeful aneurysm? The perpetrators of such internal mayhem are New York avant psychos The Sediment Club and Boston atonal banshees Guerilla Toss. 

The Sediment Club is something akin to Foot Village having forgone the percussive diarrhoea and replaced with fucked up distorted guitars, eye gouging and Pissed Jeans' reading from the Book of David Yow.  This kind of ebullient evisceration doesn't come along all that often - it's still turgid bile, but goddamn it tastes good - the black rainbow.

Sediment Club - Ink Drunk

Then the heaving discharge that is Guerilla Toss' side comes to pass, and we have even more fervent soul stripping noise, with the rants and howls of Sediment Club's Austin Julian replaced with the siren/Syren wails of Kassie Carlson and frenetic staccato noise that flays you willingly to the core and beyond. A quivering, happy mess? Only if you promise to continue. The Cenobites haven't truly understood the pleasure/pain balance - it took a bunch of raving lunatics to work out the equation, in aural form. The world is deliciously doomed.

Guerilla Toss - God Fearing Sex Symbol

Put Kicked Back Into The Crypt (which you can pick up here) alongside another Sophomore release, Skimask's Cute Mutant LP, and you have the end of the world mixtape all sewn up. See you at the Rapture, fuckers.

Shine A Lantern Into The Evil Eye

I spoke about Dream Mine, the sixth EP from Philadelphia's Lantern that came out on Bathetic Records, about this time last year. It was one of those sleazy, seductive albums that comes along, seemingly out of nowhere, singes your nostril hairs, relaxes your rectum and separates your retinas, before burning away into the dark, dark night, with nary a glance, glare or leer back at the carnage.

Well the Philly trio are done with the short talk, the foreplay, the torture porn, whatever you want to call the past three years since their inception, and are prepping their debut LP Rock 'N' Roll Rorschach to come out through Sophomore Lounge next month, and 'Evil Eye' clearly outlays that all that came before was nothing. The fact alone that they got in Jeff Zeigler (he of Clockcleaner fame/infamy) tells you that the noise will be brought - but in a cleaner fashion, one where you can hear every decibel, every strand of your fibre just before it pops. A relentless, nihilistic power display, 'Evil Eye' is the kind of gate-crashing awe that can bring down kingdoms - or at the very least, see a spike in eardrum perforations. Expect to hear more about this release next month.

Pre-order the Rock 'N' Roll Rorschach 12" here.

Rad History Month

Back in 2011, I was enamoured by Fucking Despair, a small release by Boston's Fat History Month, specifically the title track (it made our best songs for the year). This song still slays me. It is acoustic desperation excellence bar none, the kind that sweeps you away. There is a slight Australian connection with these guys also, seeing as their Safe & Sound 7" came out on Brisbane's Bedroom Suck Records the same year (you can still buy it here). The band have a LP out, Bad History Month (on Exploding In Sound/Sophomore Lounge), and it continues the duo's scattershot imagery interspersed with whimsical angst, shambolic regrets and enough rustic bombast and flippant half-jokes to fill a fleet of freak-folk flotillas, only to sink them all as they come within eyesight of the shore. Psychedelic breakdowns for the straight-edged, or pop for the deranged - either way, Fat History Month are possibly one of the most underrated acts that I have come across since I started Sonic Masala. Their songs are the kinds that you come back to time and again - and in an age of disposable art, this is mighty high praise.

You can buy Bad History Month here - it comes with a 6" x 9" 30 page illustrated lyric comic book and an 11" x 17" poster all drawn by Adric Giles. And like their good labelmates Pile and their album from last year Dripping, they don't make such rambling, discordant indie rock like this anymore - maybe they never did. A very good album that deserves much higher kudos than it's ever going to receive.

Fat History Month - Bad History Month
Fat History Month - Bald History Month
Fat History Month - Everyday Is Christmas

Screaming For Cute Mutants In Skimasks

On the 12th of the 12th of 2012, Sophomore Lounge (alongside Infinity Cat and 100% Breakfast) put out Cute Mutant, the LP from Boston noise terrorists Skimask. Voice terrorists, more like it - the two vocalists (one spitting lyrics that are so distorted that it feels like Jon Spencer ate a supermarket intercom, the other manipulating guttural noises) are the instruments, with the only other common denominator is the drumkit. That's right - no guitar or bass, the incessant noise is all from a dude's throat with effects pedals a-go-go. It makes for something wedged between Foot Village or Lightning Bolt - sure the drumming is nowhere to the same level frenzy, but the seemingly ad-hoc (and definitely crazy) song structure and feverish compositions are akin. The end result - Cute Mutant is a quivering swamp monster, fuelled by electricity and madness, feasting on dubious souls and spitting them into the converted masses' open mouths. That's not so cute, now, is it?

Grab Cute Mutant here. I have no idea what it means, but it somehow rocks, and is replayable. You've gotta fucking love that then. And if you are in Boston, and these guys are playing, put your riot gear on and GET THERE.

Skimask - Tempurpedic Mattress
Skimask - Slap Me Silly

Spider Bags Are Shitheads

The rad droogs at Sophomore Lounge have had some tasty treats out recently – Spider Bags’ Papa Was A Shithead 7” is one of them. Following on from their LP Shake My Head (out through Odessa Records here – I'm yet to hear it, would love to hear some comments), these two tracks are a definitive ball tearer. Led by Chapel Hill songwriter Dan McGee (of DC Snipers fame), Spider Bags have been serving up steaming hot piles of garage country swagger and sleaze for some time now, all sweat stained checked shirts, horned forearm tattoos and whisky showers. The titular A-side is more akin to straight up boozy punk of the spit-soaked persuasion however, (something not too far removed from an Oblivians staple) and is a jagged piece of rock that proves that yes, Papa was indeed a shithead, no doubt. Then we flip to ‘I Wish I Had Never Fed You’, a longer country waster that starts half way to an alcoholic stupor, and finishes with a caterwaul of distortion and disdain.

 

If you aren’t privy to Spider Bags, here’s a good place to start. You can grab it here – be quick cos it’s 300 copies only (on translucent purple vinyl to boot).

Spider Bags – Papa Was A Shithead
Spider Bags – I Wish I Had Never Fed You

Don't Suffer Tropical Trash - Fear Them

Talk about an about turn. A couple of months ago Kentucky label Sophomore Lounge Records released Fear Of Suffering, a 7" by seemingly newly-minted Louisville band Tropical Trash. Never heard of em? Well, the album is full of dissonant, warped rock, alternating between the driving despair of 'Baltimore' to the frenetic noise of the other, considerably shorter tracks - something akin to And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead attempting conceptual grindcore. Extreme guitar - by brass men? Yep, these guys are the horn section of SAPAT, whose evilly cantankerous Mortise & Tenon LP on Siltbreeze back in 2007 was pretty impressive. And it isn't entirely a surprise - hear the off-kilter squall on 'Pentagram Ring Finger' for example. And 'Burning Ghost' could be a nerdier Hot Snakes... Yet it's a rhythmic trance of dissonance that is strangely transfixing - and far too short. Incessant murky anti-math? Can't wait to hear what they have coming up for us next.


You can (and should) grab Fear Of Suffering here.

Tropical Trash - Baltimore
Tropical Trash - Burning Ghost

Life Partners Are For The Dogs

I haven't been able to get this album out of my head this past week. Ryan over at Sophomore Lounge Records flicked me this ages ago, and it somehow fell through the cracks (my two month break is still proving to be a pain in the arse...) Their first release for 2012, Dogs is a cassette which shows Aaron Osbourne (formerly of State Champion and Plows, among others) as Life Partner. This new batch of bummed-out, midwestern grunge folk is something else - its launch out of the bedroom and into the alleyways and shadowed doorways is a welcome if still uneasy experience. The beauty of this album is that it is harsh, bummed out rock, yet rock it does, like a proverbial motherfucker. Osbourne's fitted himself with a band and is so much stronger because of it. Taking inspiration from Pissed Jeans, Beat Happening and Springsteen's Nebraska (really), Dogs is a killer leftfield release. The sweaty desperation inherent everywhere on this track will give you a fever that only more of the same will wash away.


Give in to the incessant throb of Dogs here.

Life Partner - Mercy
Life Partner - (I'm) Getting Older