HL's 2013 Favorites

Hey folks, it was a lean year in terms of blogifying by your not-so-intrepid correspondent, but as far as good music goes, there was a great bounty. I've never left so many albums off the list that I had listened to multiple times and grown rather fond of. If you've read this far, maybe your computer is getting close to finishing the download of all the music files in this post. Thanks for taking a moment to look through my list. I hope you find some stuff in here you hadn't heard about.

25. Palms -- s/t -- (Ipecac)
This is pretty nice to listen to. A bunch of Isis guys got Chino Moreno to sing for their new band. Nice.



Once you get past the fact that this project is comprised of members of two of the most earsplitting bands of the past 20 years, you start to accept that these are excellent songs, just not as loud . We are reminded, thus, that waking up without a hangover does not automatically mean that last night was a waste of time. WYMA review here.




24. Direct Hit! -- Brainless God -- (Red Scare Industries)
This is a punk rock concept album about the impending end of the world. I'd have bet $20 that such an effort would make John Lydon roll over in his grave, but this album is loud, snotty, and cleverly sardonic -- all played at breakneck speed.




23. Kylesa -- Ultraviolet -- (Season of Mist)
The Savannah band's sixth album cranks up the psychedelia, but loses none of its edge. See Exhibit A below:



I actually reviewed this one.

22. Gorguts -- Colored Sands -- (Season of Mist)
On my ipod, Gorguts is right next to Henryk Gorecki, and it makes more than just alphabetical sense. Like the recently deceased Polish composer, Gorguts founder Luc Lemay is obsessed with composition. Like Gorecki, he works in atmospheres of grays and blacks. As sorrow is to Gorecki, aggression is to Lemay. The musicianship on this album is at times overpowering. It's like King Crimson of Death Metal. Here's the title song:



21. Nuclear Santa Claust -- Order of the New Age -- (Don Giovanni)
They have a funny name, but hell, Turd Ferguson had a funny name, and he couldn't kick out the jams like this Brooklyn punk trio. I reviewed this excellent album back in March, but it stayed in heavy rotation all year. It's old school east coast American punk music, complete with period-appropriate cold war paranoia.



20. Russian Circles -- Memorial -- (Sargent House)
This is the Chicago trio's best yet, and that's saying something. No vocals (for the most part), no indulgent solos -- they start with a simple theme and beat the musical hell out of it, all the while building to a towering climax you weren't even expecting. The track below, "1777", is brooding and beautiful, with dramatic strings adding a sense that they're recording it in a cathedral.



19. Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle -- Perils From the Sea -- (Caldo Verde)
Kozelek had a busy year, releasing at least 4 full length albums on his label, Caldo Verde. I like 'em all. But this one really struck me as a departure that works on every level. Lavalle (The Album Leaf, Tristeza), composed and recorded somber, expansive electronic tracks and emailed them to Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters, Desertshore), who would write and record lyrics and send them back for more work. Consistent with the trend of his recent work, Kozelek's lyrics are autobiographical, sometimes detailed to the point of being prosaic. As prosaic as they might be, they're never boring, and Lavalle's arrangements seem to give them even more ballast than usual, if only for being different from Kozelek's recent fixation with his classical guitar. The stunning "Gustavo", about an undocumented Mexican carpenter working on Kozelek's house until he gets busted for weed and deported, might be the best song I heard this year.



18. California X -- s/t -- (Don Giovanni)
I think this release from Don Giovanni was the first review I did in '13, and I love it even more now. Frontman Lemmy Gurtowski is a fantastic guitar player with a fantastic rock and roll name. And he had the stones to name one of the best songs of the year after himself! Do yourself a favor and crank the song below as loud as you can take it. And when you scratch your head at the chorus and say, 'dang that sounds like the Foo Fighters,' know that Lemmy is well aware of that, thank you.



17. Castevet -- Obsian -- (Profound Lore)
This second album by the Brooklyn metal trio gets the much coveted "getting most play by me right this very damned minute" prize. It feels like it was recorded in a foundry. The guitar sounds on this album are otherworldly -- at times evoking the proto-industrial roil created by Geordie Walker in the early 80s-era Killing Joke, and at other (admittedly, less frequent) times offering a more approachable prog harmony. It's pretty mathy, but never at the expense of the visceral. It's just a fascinating piece of music.



16. The So-So Glos -- Blowout -- (Shea Stadium)
Alex Levine is one of the most engaging and likeable frontmen in rock and roll. This New York band trades in high energy, well-played punk songs with a retro-British sensibility that will evoke everything from the Clash to the Specials over its 40 minute run time. Listen below to the album opener, which is introduced by a childhood home recording of Alex and his brother Ryan (also in the band) musing on the demise of Kurt Cobain.



15. KEN mode -- Entrenched -- (Season of Mist)
I feel sort of sorry for the people of Winnipeg. Not because it's cold there -- we all know that. It's because the Jets just hired Paul Maurice. Trust me, I know how that story ends. On the other hand, Winnipeg is also home to one of the best hardcore bands working today. KEN mode, named after Henry Rollins's acronym (for "Kill Everyone Now"), channel pure aggression into their fifth and best album, while never forgetting their sense of humor (see, for example, their songs "Secret Vasectomy" and "Your Heartwarming Story Makes Me Sick").



14. Parquet Courts -- Light Up Gold -- (What's Your Rupture / Dull Tools)
This NYC by way of Denton, Texas band put out one of the best slacker punk albums in years (actually in 2012, but it only got its wider release in '13). The influences are not hard to list -- Modern Lovers, Feelies, early Meat Puppets, Pavement -- and yet like anything you'd expect to be played 20 years from now (and I think this record will be), it's totally original. Austin Brown's guitar work is terrific -- it would make Stephen Malkmus roll over in his grave.



13. Vhol -- s/t (Profound Lore)
I'm a huge Mike Scheidt fan -- his main band Yob's last effort was my 2011 AOY -- so I was pretty excited to see this album hit last spring even if Mike was just singing and not playing guitar. Here he's teamed up with members of Ludicra and Hammers of Misfortune, and they achieve a facemelting amalgam of dark metal and hardcore. Scheidt's voice is a force of nature. He can hit the difficult notes like a three-pack-a-day RJ Dio, and then on a dime bring it down to a guttural roar that's simply terrifying.




12. The National -- Trouble Will Find Me (4AD)
I always have a lot of metal on these year end lists because I think as a rule the genre is a refuge for the best musicians. So I've gotten to the point that I'm willing to listen to a lot more in the way of growls and screams than I once did simply to be able to experience the creativity of these people who have dedicated themselves to such interesting and difficult music. I'd describe my attraction to The National in nearly the same way (although I think Matt Berninger's voice is itself fascinating). The Dessner and Devendorf brothers are terrific musicians who painstakingly build and record their songs. Trouble Will Find Me is, to me, their best album since Alligator. The only reason it's not number one on this list is because Alligator and Boxer (and Sad Songs) exist. Whenever I contemplate looking down my nose at the music taste of my fellow man, I try to pause and remember that The National have made it big.

11. Signals Midwest -- Light on the Lake (Tiny Engines)
This Cleveland band's last album, Latitudes and Longitudes, was that one record I happened upon the year after its release that made me wish I had saved an exalted place on my earlier best-of list for the oversight of the year. The new album is, I think, even better. Their songs are earnest and hard rocking, with arrangements that are more complicated than a great deal of today's alt/punk bands. At the same time, there's tasteful restraint -- the songs never devolve into emo wailing, or instrumental overindulgence. There are times on this record where I wish the song hadn't ended when it did -- and I mean that as high praise.



10. Poor Lily -- Vuxola -- (self-released)
This is the best punk rock album of the year. This Bronx three-piece should be a household name, headlining festivals, wearing panda-skin boots, endorsing the Glenlivet Archive and upscale cruise lines, sleeping with Kardashians. If you like punk music, or ever did like punk music, you should own this album. Here's my earlier review.




9. Future of the Left -- How to Stop Your Brain in an Accident -- (Prescriptions)
It'll make Morgan Freeman roll over in his grave, but this is the finest record for Andy Falkous since Mclusky Do Dallas. The targets of his ire seem more natural here than they have in awhile. Best of all, to me at least, is that he has really backed away from the keyboard for this one -- just a fierce (and Mcluskyesque) guitar/bass/drums package.




8. Restorations -- LP2 -- (Side One Dummy)
This is the phenomenal follow-up to one of my favorite albums of 2011. This Philadelphia band exudes a small-club ethos, but they've got a sound big enough for the arenas. In this video for album opener "D", they prove it in front of a room of pasty white people.



7. Pissed Jeans -- Honeys -- (Sub Pop)
This is the best album yet from the Allentown (now Philly) noise-punks. I reviewed it last February (so you'll excuse the dead photo link) after doing an apres-garde photo-montage "preview" a few months before that, but the crushing songs about employer-provided health coverage and cafeteria food are no less topical today.



6. The Icarus Line -- Slave Vows -- (Agitated)
I thought for a good while this would be my number one, and will never be firmly convinced otherwise. The burning guitar tones achieved on this album are so arresting, so rock and roll, that for about a month I played this on constant repeat. I was in a productivity trough on this blog, but made it a point to put at least something up to document my awe.



5. Deafheaven -- Sunbather -- (Deathwish)
I think this album deserves every one of the millions of accolades it's gotten. It's the first metal album ever to get the highest scoring album of the year from Metacritic. Deafheaven was also one of the best live shows I got to see all year. Don't miss them if they play your boringass backwater of a town. Here's the spectacular first song:



4. Phosphorescent -- Muchacho -- (Dead Oceans)
I didn't pick up this glorious record until about a month ago. It starts out with a beautiful mood-piece that will make you think of Bon Iver, but eventually loosens up into something entirely different -- saloon music, maybe, or music for heartbroken optimists. It's hard to describe except that it's just about flawless.



3. Inter Arma -- Sky Burial -- (Relapse)
This Richmond band has bequeathed to us the metal album of the year. It is colossal, deliberate and explosive. Much of it feels like a massing of forces, building slowly toward an apocalyptic release. It's really a stunning sonic achievement for a band's second album, and they, the production team and Relapse deserve a great deal of credit for doing what was necessary to document this in the way they did. Here's my favorite track -- give it some time to unwind:



2. Joel R.L. Phelps & the Downer Trio -- Gala -- (Triple Crown / 12XU)
This is the highest point (so far) of a music career filled with high points. Phelps's voice has never sounded stronger or more evocative. His taste for dirty guitar noise -- and sense of timing for acoustic -- is at an apex. And I'll throw in another candidate for song of the year -- I have yet to play "The Nashville Sound" for a person who did not immediately thereafter buy the entire album. Let's hope it's not another ten years before we get another solo album from Joel. WYMA review here.



1. The Drones -- I See Seaweed -- (Drones)
It's likely to make Bob Dylan roll over in his grave, but I'm going to go ahead and say that Gareth Liddiard is the greatest songwriter working today. I heaped enough superlatives on this album when I reviewed it back in May, so I'll spare you any more speechifying and just link the song that might be their crowning artistic achievement. Liddiard has a very uneasy relationship with the outside world. His ability to distill that into metaphors, then stories, then songs is, to me, without equal in rock music right now.



Holy cow, what a fantastic music year. Thanks to the artists who make the music we write about. Thanks to the readers who take the time to check this place. I hope all of you have prosperous years so you can buy a ton of new music. Thanks also to my blogmates. who suffer my comings and goings and my not pulling my weight with great equanimity. As always, on many levels, I'll try to do better.

REVIEW: Palms - Palms

If you seek something utterly engaging, new and different yet anchored to something familiar, you are directed to seek out the self-titled debut of Palms, an L.A.-based quartet consisting of Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno and former Isis members Bryant Clifford Meyer (guitars, keyboards), Jeff Caxide (bass, keyboards), and Aaron Harris (drums, electronics). It's got a big, almost overwhelming sound and doesn't fit neatly in any of your usual genres. The rhythm section is booming, and blends with the synths to supply almost all the sound sometimes, and at all times it supplies a strong underpinning to the music. At different times Meyer's beautiful, almost crystalline guitar tones are out front, or they share the spotlight with Moreno's majestic vocals.

In a way, I'm reminded of an old favorite, Bad Brains - the pace is obviously different, as Palms' songs are much more slowly paced and certainly more atmospheric. But to me, there are similarities: the fullness of their sound, the sound of some of Meyer's guitar tones and certainly the way Moreno's vocals are treated, do remind me of Dr. Know and H.R. And Bad Brains was another genre-busting act with a history of playing different kinds of music that sounded exactly like nobody but themselves.

Here's the "single" - the slow-building, blasted, beautiful "Patagonia":

The album consists of six songs, the shortest of which is the 5:44 "Tropics" and the longest the 10:00 "Mission Sunset". The first song, "Future Warrior", is all L.A. - in fact, the beginning of it is a bit reminiscent of the Wang Chung soundtrack to "To Live And Die in LA". And running short of adjectives to describe this record, I'd add in "expansive" and "cinematic" - maybe that is a function of them being residents of Tinsel Town, but whatever it is, this is certainly an album you can get lost in. It's out now (June 25) on Ipecac Records.

Tour dates:

July 10           San Diego, CA         Belly Up Tavern
July 11           Santa Ana CA           The Observatory
July 12           Los Angeles, CA      The Troubadour   SOLD OUT
July 13           San Francisco, CA    Slim’s
July 29           Los Angeles, CA       Hollywood Bowl (w/System of a Down)

New Post-Punk Discovery: Japanese Girls - Sharkweek EP

Japanese Girls have just released a 5-song EP, Sharkweek. They cover a fair amount of ground in the 15:00 of the EP - and I enjoy the metal guitars, crazy vocals and the overall WTF spirit of this band. Here's the video for "Vancouver Grizzly":





This is heavy post-punk with a pounding rhythm section, some real virtuosity in the guitars and serious attitude in the vocals, which range from high-pitched wails to guttural roars. To me it's reminiscent of Seattle grunge and The Cult, but with the occasional seriously metallic guitar riffs. And they even show some nice pop moves on the closing track "Friday The 13th". I think this is a band to watch.

Japanese Girls website
Facebook

New Punk Discovery: Dead Waves - Kill The Youth EP

Dead Waves are a Brooklyn, NY-based punk (bordering on metal) band consisting of brothers Ted and Nick Panopoulos, who play bass and guitar and share vocals, and drummer Franz Streit. Their new EP, Kill The Youth, sounds great loud - it's aggressive yet melodic and in places, it reminds me fondly of the bombastic early stuff from Pixies... toward that end, check out "Happy":

or perhaps GbV, circa Propeller, except maybe Pollard is sharing vocals with Lemmy... Toward that end, check out "Sky":

Oh, did that get your attention? It should - this thing's terrific. Dead Waves self-released this 5-song EP last week (June 7). You can click through the tracks above to listen to the whole EP, or read more about them including upcoming appearances on their Facebook. 

Dead Waves Facebook

REVIEW: ASG - Blood Drive

ASG is a North Carolina metal/heavy rock band, and has just released its fourth album and Relapse debut Blood Drive. On first listen, I'm knocked out by the heavy groove they ride in... but what makes me keep coming back is singer/guitarist Jason Shi’s voice. Unlike so many metal bands whose riffs and groove make me want to like them, but whose Cookie Monster vocals just don't appeal to me, ASG has risen to the all-around excellence of Relapse label-mates like Baroness and Mastodon, or other WYMA favorites Torche.

Here's "Avalanche" - the opening riff, the building guitar sounds, it's all in service of great songcraft. Shi's voice is terrific - reminiscent of Layne Staley - and he has a tremendous presence:

It gets heavier - some of these songs are amazing riff-fests, where the guitars and the vocal lines resemble a harder-edged, heavier Judas Priest, and Shi shows he's got the chops to scream along with (or on top of) even the heaviest material. Here's "Castlestorm":

And those guitars, and the rhythm section, would be enough to make ASG worth a second, and third listen. Heavy, but very melodic, some of the guitar work is so well-realized I would almost call it delicate, if it wasn't absolutely skull-pounding. But it's certainly beautiful - and some of the songs, bluesy ballads like "Blues For Bama", are enchanting. It's out tomorrow (May 28) on Relapse - you can learn more at the website, and order a vinyl edition which will contain a bonus track "Mourning of the Earth".

ASG at Relapse Records
ASG Facebook

REVIEW: The Melvins - Everybody Loves Sausages

30-year punk/metal/sludge rock veterans The Melvins return with a 13-track covers album titled Everybody Loves Sausages. Having been cited as influences themselves (by many members of Seattle's grunge scene and artists like Tool and Boris), they want to take this opportunity to share some of theirs. They cover a diverse selection of songs - art rock like Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" and pop like Queen's "Best Friend," claiming (and, really, exhibiting) a genuine love for the originals. But of course one way to show your reverence, especially if you're a nonconformist yourself, is to change it up a little bit, and they certainly do. They also enlisted several friends: including Mudhoney's Mark Arm joining them for The Scientists' "Set It On Fire", Jello Biafra contributing the creepiest Bryan Ferry impersonation ever on "Dream Home", and Neurosis' Scott Kelly pitching in on a cover of Venom's "Warhead."

The opener, "Warhead" has a real Sabbath-meets-Black Flag vibe that is something you expect from these guys, and their reworking of the Kinks' "Attitude" (with Clem Burke of Blondie somewhere in there) is hot, fast and loud. Probably my favorite track is their off-kilter cover of Bowie's slightly off-kilter 10-plus minute white soul epic "Station to Station".  As with any covers record, some tracks work better than others, but with a group as iconoclastic as the Melvins, the song choices are almost as much fun as the music itself.

"This record will give people a peek into the kind of things that influence us musically," explains Buzz Osborne. "We REALLY like all of these songs along with the bands who actually wrote this stuff because first and foremost we are HUGE music fans." For your amusement, listed below is the complete track listing with original artist and guest player notation, as well as Osborne's notes on each track - you know, showing you how the sausage was made:

1. Warhead (Venom; Guest: Scott Kelly of Neurosis)
2. Best Friend (Queen; Guest: Caleb Benjamin of Tweak Bird)
3. Black Betty (Original artist unknown)
4.  Set It On Fire (The Scientists; Guest: Mark Arm)
5.  Station To Station (David Bowie; Guest: JG Thirlwell)
6.  Attitude (The Kinks: Guest: Clem Burke of Blondie)
7.  Female Trouble (Divine, written by John Waters)
8.  Carpe Diem (The Fugs)
9.  Timothy Leary Lives (Pop-O-Pies)
10.  In Every Dream Home A Heartache (Roxy Music; Guests: Jello Biafra and Kevin Rutmanis)
11. Romance (Tales of Terror)
12. Art School (The Jam; Guest: Tom Hazelmeyer)
13.  Heathen Earth (Throbbing Gristle)

Warhead by Venom - We all love Venom.  Rumor has it that these guys are all Yoga instructors now.

Best Friend by Queen - This song was a pain in the ass to record but it came out great!  We knew it would be a head scratcher for our fans but that's kind of the deal with us.

Black Betty by Unknown - We recorded this as part of a Super Bowl contest.  We didn't win.



Set It On Fire by The Scientists - Early 80's punk rock from Perth Australia, No Shit.

Station To Station by Bowie - Bowie says he was so wacked out on coke during these recording sessions that he doesn't even remember any of this.

Attitude by The Kinks - The Kinks recorded this around the time they were raking in royalties from Van Halen's cover of "You Really Got Me."  Unfortunately, they won't be making anywhere near as much from this.

Female Trouble by Divine - Title song from my favorite John Waters movie.  We've wanted to record this for years.  Isn't that a pretty sight.

Carpe Diem by The Fugs - The Fugs were the kind of hippies I liked: mean spirited with a wicked sense of humor.  Actually I could have said the same thing about John Waters.

Timothy Leary Lives by Pop-O-Pies - I saw these guys in Seattle a few times in the early '80s.  The last time I saw them the singer begged the audience to just give him money so he wouldn't have to tour.

In Every Dream Home A Heartache by Roxy Music - Biafra sounds even weirder than Brian Ferry... that is incredible.  It was great to play with Kevin again!

Romance by Tales of Terror -  Their 1984 album is one of the best record to come out of California... anywhere actually.

Art School by The Jam - This was one of the first punk bands I ever heard.  I still like this stuff.  It's nice when that happens.

Heathen Earth by Throbbing Gristle - One of the best bands ever.


The Melvins Website
Ipecac Recordings Website

New Welsh Glam/Punk Discovery: Beard of Wolves - new EP, video, free download

Beard Of Wolves are a North Wales duo playing heavy glam/punk/metal. If you like to consider what old T Rex, filtered through industrial stuff like Depeche Mode, might sound like, give this a listen. The single ‘Wet Mouth’ is out now on limited edition 7" white vinyl through the Too Pure singles club. The new track ‘My Father Drives The Death Star’ is also available to download for free:

Beard Of Wolves self-titled EP was released March 18, and the band also released a video for another track. Here's "Wet Mouth":

More music and more tour dates to come soon. The band claims that playing live is their real love: "We wanted BOW to be fun to play live before anything else. If people can see you're into it, they're more inclined to take notice of you. And that's what we want. We want people to take notice, we want people to watch us play live, lots of them"

Beard Of Wolves Facebook

New Psych/Metal Discovery: Black Science - An Echo Through The Eyes Of Forever

Black Science is playing a wild psychedelic guitar rock, and on their album An Echo Through The Eyes Of Forever, they have done a thing guaranteed to endear them to WYMA's staff - they have covered a Guided by Voices song ("Hardcore UFOs").

It's noisy stuff with metallic guitars, although on the 15:00-plus album closer "Our Sentence Is Up", they bring in what I might describe as krautrock elements in between some full-scale guitar freakouts.

Check out the album here:



And their previous album Cosmodemonic And Beyond is available for "name your price" via Bandcamp - it sounds heavier to me - at least on first listen.





Recommended if you like guitars...

REVIEW: Pallbearer -- Sorrow and Extinction

With guitars tuned so low it sounds like they're strumming bridge cables -- gloriously distorted bridge cables -- set against soaring, perfectly keyed vocals, there are moments on this beautiful and intense record that almost sound like Mass. Indeed, the Little Rock quartet's highly anticipated debut, following on the buzz of their 2010 three song demo, feels gothic -- not in the sensitive, eyemakeup sense, but in the traditional, anti-classicist sense. Simon Schama captures it when he quotes Bishop Warburton: " 'Our Gothic ancestors had juster and manlier notions than modern mimicks of Greek and Roman magnificence,' for they were more concerned with spiritual exaltation than civic pomp." Pallbearer's brand of doom metal is gothic in that it's earthy and slow, but that's merely redolent of the genre conventions. On Sorrow and Extinction, though, there's always something else pushing it further, whether it be singer guitarist Brett Campbell's Osbourne-meets-Halford wail or the beautiful, linear leads strewn throughout these five epic-length songs.

Come on, have a listen. Here's the centerpiece of the record, "The Legend", which, satisfyingly, begins (after the distorted intro) on the same two half-notes that formed the basis of the dominant theme of the preceding song. It makes it sound like they're about to head back into that song, and then erupts into something entirely different. I promise it's really cool even if you haven't heard the earlier song



Again, you'll get that gothic, arboreal sensation taking in the last track, "Given to the Grave", where waves of bar chords support a slow lead, then retreat to a quiet guitar and drum interlude before exploding into the most chaotic and unhinged segment of the record. The double solo of the last three minutes could pass for a couple of Steve Howes ripping leads across the end of "Siberian Khatru." Brilliant.



Pallbearer are brought to us courtesy of Ontario's Profound Lore Records, which consistently produces some of the most interesting, challenging, yet listenable extreme music being recorded today (think Yob, Agalloch, Krallice).

Go see Pallbearer live. Not a lot of dates right now, but you can check them at the Pallbearer website. Here's a very decent live video of the band playing the album opener, "Foreigner".

"Don't Let Your Unattractiveness Make You Self-Conscious"

I remember watching an episode of the Munsters in which Herman said that to Marilyn (the "normal" daughter). At the time, my friend Mike acted like it was one of the funniest things he had ever heard.

Later that week, he was trying to introduce himself to a young lady at an establishment, when I guess she expressed her disinterest in a way that made him pull out his favorite Munsters line... and he got to wear what was left of her drink.

And what's more awesome than that? Well, maybe this Anacrusis cover of the Munsters theme...

Great New Songs! Future of the Left / High On Fire / PS I Love You

Man, what a week for tantalizing music announcements! I had to have seen ten things that made me go 'hells yeah' for one reason or another, but I've forgotten all but three of them, and before I forget those, I figured I'd better throw them up here.

Just so you know, we aspire to be more than merely an aggregator blog. We want to be what they call in managementspeak a "value add." This can be through incisive music analysis, or by throwing in a trenchant quote from Antonio Gramsci or Shirley Hemphill, or even a half-witty remark here or there.

I got none of that for you today, but in an attempt to justify my station among the rarefied echelon of music people above me on the blog masthead I have interspersed this post with pictures of Udo Dirkschneider. Udo is nearly as famous for his stature as he is for his leviathan vocal prowess. In the photo above, he is standing ten feet in front of the rest of his band. Below, he is whipping the crowd into a frenzy at a recent show at Madison Square Garden, or Hammersmith Odeon, or someplace.

I have written or said before, maybe even here, that Mclusky is one of my all-time favorite bands, and that Future of the Left is one of my favorite current bands. Andy Falkous is an artistic treasure in the tradition of Swift, or Wilde. When I try to think of a more modern counterpart, it's hard to ignore the recently departed Christopher Hitchens for that Falkonian blend of wit, culture and spleen. After all, it was Hitchens who said of Francois Mitterand, "One cannot eat enough, to vomit enough, at the mention of his name." And of the then-recently departed Jerry Falwell, "If he had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox." Falco, for his part, said Gareth Brown's mom is a ballpoint pen thief.

Here's Udo squeezing out a song with his current band, U.D.O.

Falkous's post-Mclusky project Future of the Left replaced its bassist and added a guitar after touring their excellent second LP, Travels With Myself and Another. Last year they released a very nice EP and now have announced that the next full length, The Plot Against Common Sense, will be released on 28 May through Xtra Mile Recordings. This week they posted the first video from the album, "Sheena is a T-shirt Salesman", over on NME. Check it out HERE.

Udo sometimes moonlights as a security guard. He doesn't need the money, he just likes authority.

High on Fire put out one of my favorite albums of 2010, and this week announced the follow-up, De Vermis Mysteriis, will be released on 3 April by eOne Music. Start saving your semoleons because that's less than 5 weeks. They also posted a bonecrunching song, "Fertile Green", over on Pitchfork. I might be able to embed it here, but there's a nice short writeup by Brandon Stosuy over there, and he's always good to read.

Seriously, the also-recently-departed Ronnie James Dio, at 5'4", towered over Udo. And yet comparing the two as vocalists, Ronnie James is the dwarfish one, and Udo is the titan. And I deeply love Ronnie James -- did you ever listen to Mob Rules (the album, not the band)? Hoo boy.

PS I Love You was a fantastically bad romantic comedy from 2007 starring Hillary Swank, and a fresh-off-300 Gerard Butler (what the hell were you thinking man?). Believe it or not, the film also had Lisa Kudrow, and was stillbad. This movie was so bad that one critic called it "more uneven than an emery board," and you know that critic had been saving that chestnut of a simile for the right moment for years.

Despite his Teutonic origins, Udo is not afraid to show the pensive, slightly crosseyed side of his personality.

It is only in that context that one's reaction to the band naming ability of Benjamin Nelson and Paul Saulnier, of Kingston, Ontario's PS I Love You, goes from, "what a stupid band name" to "what a freaking great band name!" Kingston may be famous for being the home of Carolina Hurricanes coach Kirk Muller andCarolina Hurricanes defenseman Bryan Allen, but it should be nearly equally proud of the awesome amount of beautiful noise this young duo have cranked out over the past couple of years. John posted a great song off their excellent 2010 album Meet Me at the Muster Station last January. A couple of days ago they posted a new song over on Pitchfork called "Sentimental Dishes", which will be on their new full-length, Death Dreams, out 8 May on Paper Bag Records. It's a fantastic song, and well worth the parsec it would take to get over to Pitchfork, if in fact parsec were a unit of time rather than of distance.

When Udo saw this photo, he yelled, "anatomisch korrekte!" and then headbutted his publicist in the sternum.

A Few Notes on Torche

The last time Miami's anthem-doom heavyweights Torche gave us a full album was 2008's groundbreaking Meanderthal, but word is they're about to hit us with another, from Volcom Entertainment, sometime around April. That's not to suggest they're a bunch of layabouts. The band -- Steve Brooks (guitar/vocals), Jonathan Nunez (bass) and Rick Smith (drums) -- created quite a stir with their 2010 EP Songs for Singles, ingratiating themselves with crowds and critics alike by imparting genuine metal-neck headaches whilst remaining thoroughly regular guys.

And then there's the matter of their musical influences, as observed by Pitchfork's Tom Breihan in his review of Songs for Singles: "The band take as many cues from ragged 1990s indie as they do from bongwater-dripping 70s crunch-rock, and you can hear echoes of Guided By Voices and Superchunk reverberating around in there."

Surely, you are thinking, this must be the typical Pitchfork practice of projecting their view of the music world onto some unsuspecting band -- and in the process totally snuffing their metal cred. And you would be absolutely right were it not for the fact less than a year later, Torche's three songs on their 2011 split 12" with English grinders Part Chimp were all Guided By Voices covers! Well done, Tom Breihan, well done.

Oh, and we're not talking about covering "Teenage FBI" here -- these are, as they say on the satellite radio, deep tracks. A few months ago I posted a live video of Torche playing "Exit Flagger" from the EP, and here are the studio versions of the other two, "Postal Blowfish" and "Unleashed! The Large-Hearted Boy."

Word also has emerged that the indispensible heavy music mag Decibel will feature a couple of unreleased Torche songs in its March issue as part of its Flexi Series. The songs are great, but even better is the fact that these little pull-out records are going to be worth meeeeellllions on Ebay in 50 or 60 years, mark my words.

You can check out the songs on Soundcloud below, and order the issue of Decibel here.

dB015 Torche Flexi Disc

I saw them on tour with High on Fire and Kylesa a couple of years ago, and they're a ferocious live act. Be sure to catch them when they hit the road in March with two of Raleigh's legends, Corrosion of Conformity and Valient Thorr. Check here to see if they're coming to your town.