Optimum Wound Profile - Lowest Common Dominator (1992)

UK industrial metal/hardcore. Thrash-y punk riffs, gated drums, distorted vocals, sample-heavy industrial atmosphere.

Track listing:

1. Drain

2. Tranqhead

3. Ego Crotch

4. Downmouth

5. You're Weak

6. Blindfold

7. Incision

8. Responsibility

9. Skin

10. Melt

11. Damage

12. Crave

13. Core Melt

I said: I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm just gonna bash your brains in. I'm gonna bash 'em right the fuck in.

You should also listen to:

Counterblast - Balance of Pain (1996)

Lard - Pure Chewing Satisfaction (1997)

Reversal of Man - This Is Medicine (1999)

Classic late 90s screamo/hardcore. Listened to this LP twice in a row on Saturday while doing one million pushups, still hits. There was a moment, during "Butterflies", when I realized I was listening to a song about a friend who had died, that I had listened to a bunch of times with my friend Danny who died last year, in the very room in which we had probably last listened to it; and I felt like my heart had migrated to the front of my skull and was about to explode. But I breathed, got a good clear picture of Danny in my head, said "Hey, it's great to see you, I love you," and did some more pushups. My therapist would be proud.

Track listing:

1. January Twenty Second

2. Enoch Ardon

3. Fashion Cowboys

4. The Houngen

5. Butterflies

6. Mittens and Muzzles

7. Bless the Printing Press

8. The Lottery

9. Dying on Cue

10. Conjecture

11. Hills Have Eyes

12. Transfer Zounds

13. Hand Me Complaints Please

14. Rubberneck Telepathy

15. Idle Adolescents

16. Twenty Second Example of Repetitive Nature

Friends

Let's go dig some oil

And destroy some country

You should also listen to:

pg.99 - Document #5 (2000)

Crestfallen - Streaks of Terror (2003)

Electric Frankenstein - The Time Is Now! (1996)

Two of my dearest friends, along with my beautiful wife, never gave My Bloody Valentine a chance, and they all had the same reason: they thought they were a mid-aughts MySpace emo band. (Honestly, I'm pretty sure they were all just confusing them with My Chemical Romance.) When each of them finally heard MBV -- two of them because of me, the other because she read the Thurston Moore book -- they of course loved them because they're the greatest band of all time. Is it a bad band name? I don't think so, no. At least, it wasn't when they came up with it. But I'm certain that my friends weren't the only ones.

Similarly, for years, based on their name and aesthetic, I thought that Electric Frankenstein was one of the hundreds of Cramps-worship bands that invariably failed to understand what made that band great. And of course, I was wrong. Electric Frankenstein make some of the best garage punk rock and roll this side of Scandinavia. It was about 10 years ago that I discovered this, and I'm still kicking myself for all the wasted years. Technically a compilation of an EP and two 7"s, The Time Is Now! was my first EF album, and it's still my favorite.

Track listing:

1. Teenage Shutdown

2. The Time Is Now!

3. Superstar

4. Right on Target

5. I Want More

6. Demolition Joyride

7. E.F. Theme

8. Fast & Furious

9. Rise and Crash

10. We Are the Dangerous

11. Too Much for You

12. A Sweet Sickness

My heart stopped aching

It just ran out of room

I don't feel crazy anymore

There's blood on the moon

You should also hear:

Teengenerate - Get Action! (1994)

Gluecifer - Ridin' the Tiger (1997)

Phthalocyanine - Navy Warship; (1997)

Here's a fucking weird noisy abstract techno-ish album for you to have an existential crisis to.

Track listing:

1. Jax 57 Or Jist BGIU

2. Navy; 3

3. 1.7

4. Eliditt

5. --> ...

6. Block

7. Fer U 2

8. Com.2

9. Liph; 39

10. West After

Living with lightning in your body

If you like this, listen to:

Philip Jeck - Loopholes (1995)

Black Faction - Internal Dissident Part I (1999)

Count Nosferatu - Das Schwarze Order (1996)

I honestly thought that I was maybe done with this blog, but I just went to share a link to listen to this and I couldn't immediately find one available, and I heard the call of duty. SOMEONE has to ensure that this obscure, lo-fi, French black metal demo remains attainable. I mean, what kind of world would it be. Maybe I'll turn this place into something like the Library of Congress but for shitty black metal demos.

Track listing:

1. Prologue - Das Schwarze Order

2. Christians Fall in Blood

3. Legions of Lucifer

4. Into the Circle of Black Fire

5. Raising the Dark Sword of Baphomet

6. Epilogue - War & Sodomy

I'm the black vomit of hell

More:

Osculum Infame - Sadomatic, Impure Artgoat (1994)

Skuggeheim - Vinterrikets konge (2007)

Morgan Fisher - Flower Music (1998)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
Lol Coxhill & Morgan Fisher - Slow Music (1980)

Beautiful, shimmering ambient sounds for sunny days. Real ones know that this type of stuff + black metal used to be this blog's bread and butter.

Years ago, a couple of old friends of mine dated for a few months, and when he met her dad, they shook hands then stood around not saying anything until her dad looked up at the sky and said, thoughtfully, "those... sure are some... slow moving clouds." Still makes me laugh. (This is a reference to the last song on this album.)

Track listing:

1. The Breathing Earth

2. The Beauty of Clay

3. Kalimba Petals

4. Waterglide

5. Photosynthesis

6. As the Sap Rises

7. Slow Moving Clouds

The distances we covered

You should also listen to:

Bearns & Dexter - The Golden Voyage Volume 1 (1980)

Rudy Adrian - The Healing Lake (2000)

Monster X - Indoctrination (2003)

Grind-y straight edge hardcore. I first discovered Monster X back in high school via their split with Spazz, when I was still young enough to be blown away by the mere existence of guttural vocals. Rediscovered a few years back while re-organizing my records, and shit, those gutturals still rule. They're more expected over the grind parts, but there's a really cool dissonance to hearing them over more traditional hardcore. Great band.

Also, I stopped drinking recently -- didn't really 'quit' so much as noticed that I wasn't drinking anymore and decided to embrace it -- so if you don't count my prescription speed or my openness to microdosing psilocybin every now and then, it's almost like I'm straight edge, too.

There's 45 tracks on this thing, go look at the track list on Discogs.

Live fast die young was just a fad for fucking losers

You should also listen to:

Chicken Bowels - Chicken Bowels (1987)

Kill the Man Who Questions - Sugar Industry (1999)

Funereal Moon - Beneath the Cursed Light of a Spectral Moon (1996)

Black metal as ritual dark ambient as scary sounds tape. The album starts as a fog of synth figures, haunted house sound effects, and rasping vocals. Midway through, the fog begins to intermittently morph into the more identifiable shapes of queasy, droning black metal filth. The rest of the album's runtime is spent back, forth, and on the line between these two realms. Supplicate yourself to true underground goblin supremacy.

Track listing:

1. Revelation (Intro)

2. Where Shadows of Decadence Dwell

3. Beneath the Cursed Light of a Spectral Moon (An Ancient Incantation)

4. Funeral Litanies from the Graves

5. The Howl of the Black Witch

6. Death, War and Hate (Extermination of All Forms of Life)

7. Vrykolkas

8. Lucifer's Throne of Temptation

9. I Came from Darkness to Conquer

10. Werewolf Nightmare

11. The Sign of the End of Time (Outro)

Those who resist will be tamed by terrible blows and sufferings.

Similar vibes:

Satanicum Tenebrae - Til Helvete (1994)

Udumbal - Sarcis (1998)

Caustic Resin - Fly Me to the Moon (1995)

Indie rock gone drone. Caustic Resin takes the stoned, bemused mindset of 90s alt/indie and pumps it full of the heavier, darker-tinted sounds of drone, garage, psych, and noise rock. I've been on a major 90s kick for the past few months, but due to my extremely sporadic posting, this is the first y'all are hearing about it. More to come?

Track listing:

1. Spore

2. Kill You If You Want Me To

3. Water Moccasin

4. Alien Fugue

5. Cancerous Eye

6. Healing Cough

7. The End of Betrayal

8. Damaged Animal

9. Summertime of Your Life

10. I Feel

11. A Fistful of Violence

12. Golden Hours

13. Calling Off the Dogs

14. White Box

15. Alien Fugue (Slight Return)

16. Station Wagon

Oh me oh my, I think it's been an eternity

You'd be surprised at my degree of uncertainty

How can moments go so slow

You should also listen to:

Lungfish - Artificial Horizon (1998)

Gorch Fock - Lying and Manipulating (2005)

Twisted Science - Blown (1997)

Heady electronic sounds spanning distorted breaks, echoing downtempo quasi-grooves, and uneasy noise/ambient spells, with very little in terms of anything approaching melody. However, if you're like me, you've listened to White Zombie's La Sexorcisto about 500 times, and you'll recognize that "Beady Eye" shares a sampled arpeggiating drone with "Welcome to Planet Motherfucker" -- anyone know what that's from?

Track listing:

1. Sex, Drugs and Science

2. Bender

3. Beady Eye

4. Bad Head

5. Laptop Swine

6. Theme from Slow Blow

7. Magma Hum

8. Intermission

9. Lube

10. Bad Kabuki

11. Mr Ray Gone

12. Horn

13. Here Come the Pigs

14. Fryed

15. Fin

Woven in the surface

A premonition of a land erupting

A sparkling occasion of a city

Crash down overhead

You should also listen to:

Richard Thomas - Shows and Radios Attract Paint (1998)

Ancient Methods - First Method (2007) + Second Method (2008)

Suicidal Tendencies - Suicidal for Life (1994)

Plenty of people consider Suicidal for Life the worst Suicidal album. Which is fair. But first of all, those people are wrong because Still Cyco After All These Years exists. Second: it's not on streaming so it's my responsibility as a shitty blogger to keep it in digital circulation.

Third: I want to paint you a picture. Close your eyes. Wait, shit, you can't read like that. Open your eyes. Imagine it's the mid-90s, and you're a suburban kid in your early adolescence with pretty much the exact same taste in music as Beavis & Butthead, and you think "The Goat" is comedy's greatest achievement. Yesterday was your birthday and you got a nice little stack of CDs. You pop on the S.F.W. soundtrack, which you asked for because it features Marilyn Manson, Hole, and GWAR. Aside from the Pretty Mary Sunshine track, every track is hitting. But then, a massively overdriven groove metal riff swings its dick at you and some cool dude starts shout-rap-singing the following lyrics:

"You talk your shit but I ain't listenin' / And I don't do no ass-kissin' / Now here's the point that you've been missin' / No fuckin' problem at all"

And all of a sudden you are absolutely losing your shit, throwing yourself into walls, moshing with your pillows, and you need more Suicidal. So you track down the CD with this song on it, see that tracks 2-6 are called "Don't Give a Fuck", "No Fuck'n Problem", "Suicyco Muthafucka", "Fucked Up Just Right", and "No Bullshit", and you start levitating. You plop down the money, fire up the Discman, and following a terrible, cringe-inducing intro track that your dumb-ass thinks is hilarious, the album proper kicks off with:

"I don't give a shit / I don't give a fuck / Your opinion don't mean shit to me and your shit's about to fall"

Nothing could be better. You play it for all your dumb suburban adolescent friends and everyone agrees that it's the absolute shit, and all is well. Then one fine Friday at the youth fitness center, your fitness instructor hears you talking to your friend about this album, tells you how dumb you are, and lends you his copy of the self-titled, an absolute peerless 10/10 classic. Of course, it completely knocks your socks off. Plus you just so happen to be in the middle of deciding to be punk now so it works for your new personal brand. Pretty soon you're renouncing your love for Suicidal for Life, White Zombie, Metallica, Guns 'n' Roses, soccer and all the rest, and committing yourself to a life of NOFX, Crass, Op Ivy, and Dead Kennedys.

Somewhere, Adam Sandler sheds a single tear.

Then like 30 years later you randomly decide to put it on while you're doing pushups and you're like, "hey, if you ignore how terrible it is, it's actually pretty good!" You finish your pushups, sit on the couch listening to "Benediction" trail off for the first time since you shared bedroom walls with your sister and your parents, and you realize that finally, after all these years, you truly don't give a fuck again. And all is well.

Track listing:

1. Invocation

2. Don't Give a Fuck

3. No Fuck'n Problem

4. Suicyco Muthafucka

5. Fucked Up Just Right

6. No Bullshit

7. What Else Could I Do?

8. What You Need's a Friend

9. I Wouldn't Mind

10. Depression and Anguish

11. Evil

12. Love vs. Loneliness

13. Benediction

You ain't alive if you ain't livin'

You waste your life whinin' and snivelin'

So buckle up 'cause now I'm drivin'

No fuckin' problem at all

More dubious adolescent favorites:

Psychotica - Psychotica (1996)

Skrew - Shadow of Doubt (1996)

Honey Is Cool - Early Morning Are You Working? (1999)

The second and final full-length from Honey Is Cool, a Gothenburg indie rock band that ultimately served as a springboard for the career of Karin Dreijer, aka Fever Ray. Dreijer's powerful, distinctive vocals are very much the focal point here, but here it's in service of dark-tinted, dynamic, muscular indie rock. I forget how I first found this band but I know it was via some ass-backwards-internet-music-nerd means, as I had no idea Dreijer was in the band when I first put them on, and it slowly dawned on me as her voice soared over the opening whirlwind of the title track.

Track listing:

1. Early Morning Are You Working?

2. Bolero

3. Great and Smaller Things

4. There's No Difference

5. Summer of Men

6. I Surprise

7. Waiting for a Friend

8. My Love Is a Bell

9. Lead but Low

10. Something Above the Mountains

11. The Giraffe

I'm head over heels but I'm not around

You should also hear:

Come - Eleven:Eleven (1992)

dEUS - The Ideal Crash (1999)

Percy Jones Ensemble - Propeller Music (1990)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Percy Jones - Cape Catastrophe (1990)

Percy Jones with Tunnels - Percy Jones with Tunnels (1993)

Vic Stevens' Mistaken Identities - No Curb Ahead (1997)

Tunnels - Painted Rock (1999)

Drum machine, noodling fretless bass, synthetic-ass-all-hell keyboards, fragmented guitars -- generally woozy, slightly unsettling, 100% nerdy fusion. Midway through, vocals enter the mix, and the album morphs into a mid-era Gary Numan record. I listen to this by myself on headphones, and I think, "damn, this is so fucking rad, I wish all music was this weird;" I put this on a stereo with someone else in the room, I feel like a degenerate and a pervert.

Track listing:

1. $10,000 Bookshelf

2. Heidelberg Switch

3. Barrio

4. Panic - Disorder

5. Count the Ways

6. Turn Around

7. Slick

8. Slack

9. All for a Better Way

10. Looking for a Sign of New Life

11. Razorville

12. K2

Soon you're looking down at creatures in the dark

If you like this, you should hear:

Scott McGill - The Hand Farm (1977)

Louis de Mieulle - Defense Mechanisms (2011)

O.L.D. - Lo Flux Tube (1991)

Related:
O.L.D. - The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak (1993) + Formula (1995)

Lotus Eaters - Alienist on a Pale Horse (2001)

Khanate - Things Viral (2003)

Khlyst - Chaos Is My Name (2006)

Just rewatched Brainscan and a few takeaways: 1) What a confused movie. It's like it wants to be both this dark psychological thriller examining dissociation from self via violent entertainment and a made-for-TV teen movie, then on top of that there's this utterly ridiculous, borderline Robin Williams-type character eating raw chicken and jamming out to Primus? 2) Really fun and dumb, and worth a watch if you like 90s horror, but talk about an anticlimax. 3) Great soundtrack.

Which brings me to O.L.D., whose unhinged take on industrial metal does some heavy lifting during the film's first and grizzliest murder scene. The scene actually features excerpts from the first two tracks on the above-linked The Musical Dimensions of Sleastak, but I've already posted that, obviously. And Lo Flux Tube is ultimately probably my favorite anyway.

Track listing:

1. Outlive

2. Disconnect Self

3. Citient Null

4. Lo Flux Tube

5. Vein Water

6. Marzuraan

7. Disassemble

8. Z.U.

9. Outlive Again (Ganglehea Mix)

Let the mind ascend

Soar through the sky

Let the mind ascend

Leave the pain behind

Let the mind ascend

Watch the body die

You should also listen to:

Painkiller - Execution Ground (1994)

Gasp - Drome Triler of Puzzle Zoo People (1998)

Aquila - Observations on the Loss of Culture (1996)

Techno/trance/abstract electronic with a dark, heady vibe from Australian producer Matthew Thomas. Great headphone listening. 

Track listing:

1. Culture

2. Museum

3. Identity

4. Knowledge

5. The Impossibility of Isolation

6. Ritual

7. Progress

Spacial interaction

You should also listen to:

Floatpoint - Beam Error (1995)

Jetone - Autumnmonia (2000)

Oren Ambarchi - Stacte.2 (1999)

Two untitled early guitar/looping experiments from the great Oren Ambarchi. I first heard Ambarchi years ago via his collaborations with Stephen O'Malley/Sunn O))) -- Burial Chamber Trio, Gravetemple, Pentemple, Shade Themes from Kairos -- but only recently started listening to his solo stuff. Five albums in, I've yet to hear anything that's less than excellent, and Stacte.2 was where I started, so that's where we're starting. Its joyful, minimal, textural sounds are all guitar-sourced and I'm guessing are the results of tape looping, as according to the album notes: "All sounds = guitar – no editing no processing no computer no". I still don't understand how those aren't synths but what do I know.

"Quite the opposite," she said, "I've never felt better."

If you like this, you should listen to:

Troum - Mort Aux Vaches: SEN (2000)

Growing - His Return (2005)

Kenny Wheeler • David Friedman • Jasper van 't Hof - Greenhouse Fables (1992)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:
John Taylor, Norma Winston, & Kenny Wheeler - Azimuth (1977)

Kenny Wheeler - Deer Wan (1978)

That album cover really is awful, huh? I suppose the actual art itself isn't so bad, but those fonts, and the overall composition? It looks like a self-help book about how bipolar depression can effect your marriage or something.

Which is a shame, because the music is positively gorgeous ambient jazz.  Wheeler's trumpet/flugelhorn, Friedman's vibraphone, and van 't Hof's piano make for beautiful, contemplative bedfellows, effortlessly combining and dispersing, allowing for a sense of dynamic and movement even as the volume rarely goes beyond a gentle murmur.

Track listing:

1. Zambon

2. Everybody's Song but My Own

3. Truvib

4. Greenhouse Fables

5. Farm

6. Salina Street

I follow to the edge of the earth

And fall off

You should also listen to:

Bill Frisell - In Line (1983)

Eberhard Weber - Pendulum (1993)

Yume Bitsu - Yume Bitsu (1999)

Jammy space/post-rock from good ole Portland, OR. Gathering clouds of droning distortion; chiming, almost krautrock-like cleans; keyboards/samples/tape loops (I'm not really sure at times); the occasional murmur-y vocal; and the strange sense of floating in mid-air yet feeling hopelessly weighed down.

Track listing:

1. Team Yume

2. I Wait for You

3. Surface I

4. Truth

5. Surface II

6. The Frigid, Frigid Body of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg

Like amputees

We wander aimlessly

And nothing sets us free

If you like this, listen to:

Light - Turning (1996)

Landing - Oceanless (2001)

Reggie and the Full Effect - Greatest Hits '84-'87 (1999)

To start, I'd like to share the crooked path that I took last night to listening to Greatest Hits '84-'87 for the first time in a number of years: A contestant named Suzanne Goldlust, who I'm arbitrarily routing for, wins Jeopardy! (I'm a few episodes behind) → Start singing "Susanne" by Weezer → Go to the kitchen to make brownies, listen to "Susanne" → "I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams" → Return of the Rentals → "Holiday" by the Get Up Kids → Greatest Hits '84-'87.

I was 17, a junior in high school, and had been dating this girl for over a year -- which in high school relationship time is practically a lifetime -- when she cheated on me, then dumped me before school, in the rain, on her birthday. After a couple weeks of me crying, writing terrible poetry, and generally moping around, my Mom took me to Record and Tape Traders and told me she'd buy me a CD of my choice, hoping to cheer me up. I had heard some of Greatest Hits '84-'87, and even though my initial reaction had been to hate it, when I saw it on the shelf, it called to me.

Friends, this record completely turned me around. It didn't just speak to my broken heart, my insecurities, and my profound teenage yearning: it translated them into the biggest, brightest, catchiest hooks I'd ever heard. (Kinda like that line about cocaine in Walk Hard: "It turns all your bad feelings into good feelings!") The language, which clearly was simplistic by design -- all "girl"s and "boy"s and "you"s and "heart"s and "never"s and "run away"s -- made it even more potent, as did the rich, shimmering synths, which sounded lifted directly from "Friends of P". Plus there were a bunch of dumb, fun sketches. I became obsessed, and played it over and over at home and in my friends' cars, as we all came to memorize and sing along to every goddamn word. Thus began our emo phases.

Some less personal background info for those who don't already know: Reggie and the Full Effect is the emo-power pop solo project of James Dewees, who played in Coalesce (that's him on drums), the Get Up Kids, and a bunch of other bands. Greatest Hits '84-'87 is, obviously, a joke name, as it was recorded in 1998 with two other Get Up Kids, then released the following year. It's the project's first album. Dewees is punker, cooler, and nicer than you. This record usually sounds cloying/grating to new listeners, and I get it. It's still my heart.

P.S. Thanks everyone for all the kind words on my last post. It truly means a lot to me, even coming from (sometimes anonymous) strangers on the internet.

Track listing:

1. Drunk Guy at the Get Up Kids Show

2. Girl, Why'd You Run Away?

3. Fiona Apple Can Kiss My Black Ass

4. What's Wrong?

5. Props to the Queen of Pop A.K.A. Keep on Climbin' That Velvet Rope Baby

6. Your Girlfriends Hate Me

7. Megan Is My Friend to the Max

8. My Dad - Happy Chickens (Kirksta Party-to-Go Mix)

9. Another Runaway Song

10. Drunk Guy Talks Chemicals to Us at the Get Up Kids Show

11. Your Boyfriend Hates Me

12. Pick Up the Phone Master P

13. Where's Your Heart?

14. Get to the Choppa

15. Better for You

16. Everything's Okay

17. Just a Reminder

18. Brandi's Birthday Song

So long

I finally figured out what was wrong

You should also listen to:

that dog. - Totally Crushed Out! (1995)

Tony Molina - Dissed and Dismissed (2013)

Crawl - Earth (1995)

The 90s saw no shortage of bands worshipping at the altar of Godflesh, and I'd be lying if I said Crawl wasn't in that number. But crucially, Crawl injected plenty of death metal energy into the dystopian industrial wasteland, which sets them apart and fucking rules. As found in an albums folder in my Music app labeled "SHUPS", which is short for "pushups", obviously.

Track listing:

1. Skinned

2. Servant

3. Womb

4. I Believe

5. Machines Way

6. Emotional Cage

7. Soundless

8. Gray

9. Release

Malignant cancer of the ecosystem

Also listen to:

Pitch Shifter - Industrial (1991)

Meathook Seed - Embedded (1993)