Tonight on Illogical Contraption: Dr. Jacob K. Ray and Open lines 10pm-Midnight PST on FFCFreeRadio.com

Great things like The Illogical Contraption Radio Program only happen once in a lifetime. Magic like this takes a special alignment of the planets, the gods shining their keen eye upon certain people and a special chemistry much like Billy Crystals and Meg Ryan in They Gort Mail.

By the way did you hear what Phil Anselmo said when he saw Kim Kardashian’s centerpieces at her wedding? “Now THAT’s a vulgar display of FLOWERS!” LOL LOL OLOLOL

Tonight we have writer/musician Dr. Jacob K Ray, AKA Alabama Jake, bestselling author of over 30 novels (no joke!). Including the classics SURF NAKED!, Spotting and Reporting Sex Offenders, Deadache and my personal favorite Drink Responsibly!: A How-To Guide for Drinkers who want to cut back. He’s going to tell us what life is like as a punk rock author living in a Kindle world and dishing out advice to YOU THE CALLERS.

Tonight @ 10pm-Midnight PST in Studio 1A on FCC FREE RADIO

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Hadez - Guerreros De La Muerte (1986)

I've found that I can pretty much get down with any metal band from Central or South America from the years 1980 to 1990. Lot of really batshit crazy material, the type of shit that only some combination of isolation and motivation can produce. I mentioned the Parabellum album in my first contribution to Illcon but they're hardly the whole picture. And while they may have been one of the more extreme examples (even the most extreme, depending on who you might ask), there were legions of other like-minded metalheads that pushed their music towards an extremity that's rarely been paralleled. A good example is Lima, Peru's Hadez.

And holy shit, the cojones on this fucking band. So the first song on the first demo they release is pretty much the riff from Pentagram's "Forever My Queen" note-for-note played at various speeds (a striking similarity the band may or may not have been aware of, as the Pentagram song, while initially recorded in 1973, didn't see a semi-official release until twenty years later).

That's their introduction to the world.

That.

Then the next song kicks off with a riff that's stolen fucking exactly from Hellhammer's "The Third Of The Storms". But in between what seems like stabs at blatant plagiarism, the band moves into a zone where they may be falling completely apart or they may be taking off onto some higher plane of musical reality. It's hard to tell which. They'll throw in a standard thrash riff, but then everybody just starts soloing. And I don't mean melodic solos either. It's like everybody (drums included) is trying to cop the whole atonal noisemaking thing Kerry King built a career upon.

It almost borders on free jazz sometimes, like an evil Caspar Brotzmann or something. I'd like to think they were trying to advance the art form with a sort of hyperspeed avant-garde plunderphonic approach, but in all likelihood they were just banging this shit out based on enthusiasm and adrenaline with little concern for trivial details like songs, musicianship, or recording quality. Apparently, Hadez is still around and has a good number of releases under their collective bullet belt, but honestly I don't want to hear them. Even though there was a release called Extreme Badness On The World, which rules, there's no way any of their subsequent albums could be as spot-on perfect as this.

Oh yeah, and this may be the only band that utilized a "Z" in an intentional misspelling and can get away with it.

That's saying a fucking lot.

--



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Hadez - Guerreros De La Muerte

Scald - Will of the Gods is Great Power(1996)

A fine example of epic doom of the Bathory school from Russia's premier purveyors of White Tiger: Scald. Slow riffs, with melodic leads and soloz and a ton of keyboards. 

two kilos of your finest белый тигр please

After the Iron Curtain dropped these dudes didn't wast any time: formed in 1993 they cranked out a demo in 1994 and put out Will of the Gods is Great Power (originally Will of Gods is a Great Power) in 96 on MetalAgen. Slow, epic riffs drive onwards like longships towards a monastery, soloz and harmonies fly over it all like the diseased heads of mine enemies and leading it all is the one and only Maxim "Agyl" Adrianov. He displays a wide range of clean vocals, from low croons to high screams. Though the album make heavy use of keyboards, they never take the lead or get ridiculous.

The downside is this album has a terrible production; despite being reissued twice, nobody has really given then their sonic due. Cymbals often overdrive, guitars often sound blown out and Agyl often sounds like his mouth is full, especially on the lower registers. Despite the shoddy production Will of the Gods is Great Power succeeds on musical merit alone. 

Unfortunately Agyl died in 1997 in a train accident, which isn't even that cool way to die, like a fucking tsunami or getting caught in a snowstorm and dying of hypothermia. His bandmates decided not to go on as Scald and formed Tumulus, which in my opinion is an inferior product.

Воля богов великой державы

Polluted Inheritance - Ecocide

For tonight's entertainment, I present Polluted Inheritance's debut LP, Ecocide. I mentioned them in my last post and I thought for symmetry's sake I would offer up another example of Dutch tech-death circa '92. You may be more acclimated to their totally limpid and accessible 2001 album, Into Darkness, which feels more like a coattails-riding cash grab (gash crab?) than anything. But back in the day, Polluted Inheritance were straight legit. They've got the rhythmic attention deficit disorder thing going with songs unfolding in unexpected ways and harmonized leads that kind of come at you out of nowhere. In that sense, they've got more in common with Retribution-era Malevolent Creation than, say, Grave. In fact, they'd fit nicely alongside some of those other Florida heavyweights but I'm not ready to take that line of thinking any farther.

Whatever you do, don't listen to the lyrics too hard because you'll probably lose your shit. In the halcyon DM age you'd hope they could do better than, "Scream out, the agony of pain!" (track six, "Fear") but apparently Polluted Inheritance could not. Not for nothing, 'the agony of pain' just doesn't sound all that brutal. No one listens to the lyrics anyway so you should be good. But, to be safe, these guys should've had the common sense to bury their lyrics in that swirling miasma like everyone else back then.

lololol

oh yeah here you go

Polluted Inheritance - Ecocide

Naked Lunch

I'm not a statistician, but based on the crude, haphazard and half-assed surveying that I've done, I'd be willing to guess that the average IllCon reader has some interest in William S. Burroughs and/or David Cronenberg. As far as my lazy research tells me, there is only one place where the two overlapped, 1991's Cronenberg directed film version of Naked Lunch. The director's early work in the 70's and 80's essentially founded a whole new way of looking at monster horror, namely in which the monster is within ourselves and hence, Burroughs seems a nice fit. Cronenberg has since branched out into new genres but the theme of internal transformation still runs through his work.

While it included many aspects of its titular source, the film Naked Lunch also included biographical material from Burroughs' life. Still, I don't think one necessarily has to be a fan of Burroughs' writing to appreciate the movie. As an exercise in oddity it can stand alone just fine. In truth however, despite my ascribed area of "expertise" here at IllCon I have no intention of talking about the film. I haven't seen it in over a decade. No, what I want to tell you about is the Naked Lunch soundtrack by Howard Shore. Shore got his start working with Cronenberg, and has scored almost all of the director's films (including Videodrome.) Obviously it's a partnership that works, and this Naked Lunch soundtrack is ample proof. Still, I'm not even here to talk to you about the soundtrack to Naked Lunch, merely to point out that it is awesome and encourage you to listen.

Buy yourself some Naked Lunch

Lunch

Lest you think that Howard Shore is some kind of one director pony however I offer this other awesome selection. In addition to the above, in the same year he scored the phenomenal  psychological crime/horror Silence of the Lambs for director Johnathan Demme. (He also did some Twilight ST's, but whatever, gotta pay the bills right?)

Buy Yourself some Silence of the Lambs

Silence

Cranium - Speed Metal Slaughter (1998)

Man, has this week sucked. I mean really, really sucked! I feel like my head is about to explode. Yesterday I had been up since the break of dawn, literally. My goal: trying to get caught up on reading, assignments, and HW for all of my classes. Finals are approaching and I have been overwhelmingly busy. And it sucks 'cause all I really want to do is slack off, drink beer all day, and listen to metal. The previous day saw me do the same thing though - I was up from dawn to dusk. I purposely avoided the phone, closed the blinds, and basically gave the rest of the world the middle-finger. The shit we students do to earn a degree, shit!

So last night I was working on some silly assignment for one of my classes. Realizing I wasn't going to garner any more success in completing it and I had had it with numbers, equations, text books, and papers, I set aside the books and went out to grab some dinner and a couple brews.

Lately I have been getting into darker and heavier beers such as this, which I highly recommend! But at over $10 a bottle, that can make a pretty significant dent into the pocket book! So, rather than opening the last bottle I had and digging into the "stash" I have hidden from my roommate, I decided to go to the store up the street. After a quick, painless walk to a pizza joint around the corner, I proceeded to the store for brew. Since I already had eaten, I was mainly on a mission to simply get beer. While this so-called "marketplace" has had a few new beers in stock recently, I wanted something different from the norm... Something I hadn't had in a while. I looked... and looked... and looked. But nothing appealed to me. They don't have that large of a selection but as mentioned, they get some new stuff in on occasion. When I was about to say "fuck it" and simply grab what I usually go for, I saw this was hiding from view! As was this! Saweeeeeet! Knowing fair well I still had shit-ton of stuff to do the next day I only picked up a couple bottles, one of each. While I have had significantly better brew from Germany, for the price ($3-4 a bottle) you really can't complain. Both beers are great for when you simply want something that tastes unique but isn't overpowering either.

Now Optimator is not that high in alcohol and neither is Ayinger but if consumed on an empty stomach, one can get a fairly rip-roaring buzz. Optimator tends to be dark-amber in color, with medium carbonation for a slight head that is generally off-white in color; it is a big malty brew that possesses a medium body that has hints of caramel, dark fruits (prunes, figs, raisins), and coffee in its nose and finish. Ayinger's Oktober Fest-Marzen tends to be copper in color, with a slight creamy, white head that settles quickly; it is a medium, light bodied beer that has the aroma and taste of sweet caramel malts that lead to a light, syrupy yet crisp aftertaste. Both beers have the consistency of a well-crafted lager and are only, very slightly hoppy. Needless to say both are, or rather, were quite refreshing!

Well, those two beers obviously didn't last long! Apparently I got such a rip-roaring buzz that I never got back to studying and quickly found myself listening to some tunes. I began with some Teutonic metal, which I thought was appropriate for the occasion. German beer goes really well with German metal, right? Subsequently this evolved into listening to some of this as well as this. At this point, I was more than just two beers deep as I got into my "stash" and with my iTunes library on random when I happened across this! Fuck yeah!! CRANIUM!!! I almost forgot I had this! Even though they're not German in origin, they might as well have been. For the next hour, I listened to most of Cranium's back-catalog and as a result, my beer "stash" has diminished in volume (funny, I'm not hungover today).

So what about this band called 'Cranium', you ask? Cranium hails from Sweden and was more or less a side-project of Dawn. Take the best of Destruction circa 1988 (i.e. Release From Agony) throw in a little Exciter, add some Kreator to the mix, and maybe throw in the tongue-in-cheek humor of Tankard and you have one of the best thrash bands to have surfaced during the retro-thrash resurgence of the late 1990s. Actually according to Metal-Archives the band "formed in 1985 by brothers Philip and Gustaf von Segebaden. The band later changed their name to Legion and reformed in 1996 as Cranium." They originally had been on the now defunct Necropolis Records, thus much of their material is now out of print and hard to find - at least, I haven't had any luck in finding it. They are relentless in their approach, are obscenely funny, and shred to boot! I could go further into their sound, or perhaps even provide further background, but I'll just let you listen for yourself...

Plus with an awesome band name like 'Cranium', who wouldn't want to check them out?!

So go out to the nearest local store (preferably one that specializes in stocking the aforementioned imported beer), get yourself a couple brewskies, and crank your Cranium!! Oh yeah, and quit being a poseur!

Prepared to get slaughtered!

Metalum/Last.FM


...fuck, my head hurts...

KING KILL 33: The Strange Life And Times Of James Shelby Downard

"The United States, which has long been called a melting pot, should more descriptively be called a witches' cauldron wherein the 'Hierarchy of the Grand Architect of the Universe' arranges for ritualistic crimes and psychopolitical psychodramas to be performed in accordance with a Master plan."

-J.S.D.

In addition to his super-cool name, the mysterious hermit, conspiriologist, synchromysticist, anthroponomastic etymologist, and onomastic toponymist James Shelby Downard had quite a few things going for him before his death in 1998, including a vast knowledge of Freemasonry, language, politics, and, perhaps most importantly, alchemy. He was a man who knew no equal in the realms of conspiracy and paranoia, and, had his work not been brought to light by Feral House writer/editor Adam Parfrey in the years before his death, he would have passed almost unnoticed as such.

Downard's unique take on Americana via occult symbolism and revisionist history was firmly rooted in the basic tenets of alchemical magic, and his belief that alchemy (as practiced by Freemasons, of course) guided much of America's historical path. Downard was not a prolific man, espousing his theories in small pamphlets spread out through the years. But his most compelling ideas about Americana and alchemy can be boiled down to three major points (a "trinity" if you will--more on that later):

1) The detonation of the first atomic bomb at the Trinity site in New Mexico in 1945 represented the "destruction of primordial matter" necessary to begin magical transformation in alchemical lore.
2) The assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX, November 22, 1963 represented the "killing of the king" which functions as a second step in the alchemical trinity.
3) A third, unidentified event would complete this Trinity and usher in a new age of either supreme enlightenment or supreme evil. Traditionally, this alchemical "third step" consists of "MAKING MANIFEST ALL THAT IS HIDDEN".


Downard's best known work, a summation of these theories co-authored by controversial anti-Zionist conspiracy nut Robert Hoffman II, was titled King Kill 33, self-published, and distributed in small batches in 1987. You can read the preface (and then some) HERE, and after that buckle up and READ KING KILL 33 IN ITS ENTIRETY RIGHT HERE. It is some heavy shit.

Arguably, Downard's second greatest venture into the public eye came via Adam Gorightly's book, James Shelby Downard's Mystical War (BUY IT!), released in 2008.
Amazon.com says this: "Mind Control, occult scenarios, conspiracy and ritual crimes… In "James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War," author Adam Gorightly chronicles the famed conspiracy researcher’s life long battles against Masonic Sorcery as an investigator and exposer of the Science of Symbolism, Onomatology (Science of Names) and Mystical Toponomy (Science of Places). "James Shelby Downard’s Mystical War" picks up where Downard left off and follows the bread crumbs down a rabbit hole where only the brave (or crazy!) dare follow."

Then again, Amazon is often full of shit. If you'd like to learn a bit more before actually purchasing Gorightly's book, check out an excellent, detailed review (which nearly doubles as a Downard bio) over at Loren Coleman's Twilight Language blog. From his write-up:

"As you begin to read this new book about Downard, you might think that you have opened a cryptocomedic LSD trip about a conspiracy-oriented Forrest Gump-like character, who amazingly finds himself in all the wrong places at the wrong times...
Gorightly escorts the reader abroad a rollercoaster ride in which Downard is a Freemason scapegoat being ritualistically abused, watching the KKK hang a person at a crossroads, seeing Alexander Graham Bell receiving homoerotic sex magik fellatio, visiting J. Edgar Hoover's office, and getting a phone call from FDR."

Click HERE for full size.

Ever heard of William Grimstad? Me neither, but here's an oft-quoted excerpt from William Grimstad's piece on Downard, taken from 1978's Weird America:

"Would you believe John F. Kennedy as a ceremonial king-who-must-die? I'm afraid there is a certain body of opinion, undoubtedly the farthest-out brain wave of assassinology yet, that maintains the killing was pulled off, not by the Russians, the Cubans, the CIA, or the Mafia, but by alchemists.
As I understand the hypothesis, President Kennedy was for some reason chosen as The King (remember "Camelot," "Macbird" and all that?) after the fashion of James G. Frazer and Mary Renault whose "The King Must Die" he had been given to read before his death. This killing of the king in Dallas was related somehow to the touching off of the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity Site in New Mexico 18 years earlier. Apparently the Bomb was the "destruction of primordial matter" stage of the grand alchemical working, but these conspiracy buffs aren't much more specific on details than were the early alchemists in their recipes. Anyway, Kennedy represented the next stage of the process - the "Death of the White King" - when he was immolated on a trinity site of his own. For, aren't Dealey Plaza and the ill-famed Triple Underpass on the bank of the old Trinity River?"

Sounds feasible, right? We already know the Freemasons run the show, dangling, as it were, from puppet-strings held by the Illuminati, who are in turn controlled by a vastly secretive race of shapeshifting reptilian space aliens. Common knowledge here, really, but the weird connections that Downard pointed out in his life work will really blow your mind. I don't mean to mislead: he didn't have any reptoid/Illuminati theories per se. But the loose ends he ties together via language, numbers, and geography are multitudinous are cripplingly odd nonetheless...


Also important: Masonry and the Downardian Nightmare, by Adam Parfrey. Foreward to Part 1 of JSD's autobiography, Carnivals of Life and Death. Buy said volume HERE. Parfrey's pieces on Downard in the much-cited Apocalypse Culture books are absolutely essential. Downard's Carnival only covers his life from birth to age 26--he died before completion of the second volume.

But back to the names and numbers...

Consider, my friends, these concepts (taken en masse from The Sorcerer's Apprentices. James Shelby Downard and the Mysteries of Americana, by Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen), just the tip of the iceberg, really, when studying JSD's work:

- Dallas is located just south of the 33 degree of latitude. The 33rd degree is Freemasonry's highest rank.
- Kennedy's motorcade was rolling toward the "Triple Underpass" when he was slain by, according to some analysts, three gunmen. Three tramps were arrested right after the murder. Hiram Abiff, architect of Solomon's Temple and mythic progenitor of Freemasonry was murdered according to Masonic legend by three "unworthy craftsmen."
- "Dea" in Latin means goddess. "Ley" in Spanish can refer to law or rule. "Dealey Plaza" was "goddess-rule" plaza.
- Blamed for the assassination was a man named "Oz," explained by Downard as "a Hebrew term denoting strength." Divine strength is integral to the King-killing rite.
- "Oz" was killed by "Ruby," just as the ruby slippers freed Dorothy from the land of Oz in The Wizard of Oz, "which one may deride as a fairy tale but which nevertheless symbolizes the immense power of 'ruby light' otherwise known as the laser."


- Dealey Plaza is near the Trinity River, which before the introduction of flood control measures submerged the place regularly. Dealey Plaza therefore symbolizes both the trident and its bearer, the water-god Neptune. "To this trident-Neptune site," writes Downard, "came the 'Queen of Love and Beauty' and her spouse, the scapegoat, in the Killing of the King rite, the 'Ceannaideach' (Gaelic word for Ugly Head or Wounded Head). In Scotland, the Kennedy coat of arms and iconography is full of folklore. Their Plant Badge is an oak and their Crest has a dolphin on it. Now what could be more coincidental than for JFK to get shot in the head near the oak tree at Dealey Plaza. Do you call that a coincidence?" For those in our audience still too puzzled by the whole "Wizard of Oz" thing to get that last bit: the "Queen" is Jackie and "Ceannaideach" is the Gaelic form of Kennedy.
- An earlier "Trinity Site," in New Mexico, was the location of the first atomic bomb explosion. Chaos and synergy, breaking apart and joining together are the first principles of alchemy. The atomic bomb broke apart the positive and negative (male and female) elements that compose primordial matter. Physicists refer to this fiendish trickery as "nuclear fission."
- The New Mexico "Trinity" sits on the 33rd degree latitude line.

- The Kennedy assassination's true significance was concealed by the Warren Commission headed by Freemason Earl Warren with Freemason Gerald Ford as its public spokesman. The Commission drew its information from the FBI headed by Freemason J. Edgar Hoover and the CIA, which transmitted information through former director Freemason Allen Dulles who sat on the commission.
- A decade later Ford, when president himself, was the target of an attempted assassination in front of the St. Francis Hotel, located opposite Mason Street in the City of St. Francis, San Francisco. Members of the Freemasonic "Hell Fire Club," site of many a sex orgy involving such luminaries as Freemason Benjamin Franklin, called themselves "Friars of St. Francis."
- The St. Francis Hotel was also the site of sex orgies. On its premises occurred the rape- murder of Virginia Rappe by silent film comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. Virginia Rappe's name is a variation on "virgin rape." The rape of a virgin is an important alchemical sex-magic rite.

I apologize for throwing all of this information at you in such a relatively short amount of time. Downard's writing takes lots of time to digest (to say the least). But allow me one last digression before I leave you:

Remember up top, when I alluded to the alchemical "third step" Downard predicted in almost all of his work--the act of MAKING MANIFEST ALL THAT IS HIDDEN? The historical event that would usher a New Dark Age (and/or enlightenment)? Remember?
Well, many have speculated that a very major tragedy in American history, a tragedy that the man himself didn't live to witness, served as completion of the Downardian Trinity...

Totally, bro

James Shelby Downard was indeed a weird guy--seen by many as a genius, a guru, a wizard--but most often, as a kook. I definitely count myself among those who think he may have been on to something huge and hidden. But then again, there are those who doubt he ever existed at all.

Open Lines tonight on Illogical Contraption Radio. 11/11/11 day. Yep.

Listen to IllCon Radio tonight @ 10pm-Midnight PST on FCCFREERADIO.com

“The Meaning of the 11:11 Time Prompts.

Those who are prompting you are Planetary Helpers, Secondary Midwayers or ‘lower angels.’ They are opportunists. They will vary the numbers to make you realize you are dealing with incredible intelligence, and they would like you to live a more spiritual life. They are all good guys and gals.

At this point in time more than 75,000,000 million people all over the world are getting the 11:11 pm and 11:11 am ‘wake-up’ and ‘reminder’ prompts, as well as other time-prompts like 1:11, 2:22, 333, and more. Some will see this as positive, some will fear, but this is the New Age – the Correcting Time — and the communication circuits to higher spheres have largely been reconnected. There is nothing to fear but fear itself, because the Lucifer rebellion was at last adjudicated in the mid 1980’s.”

LOL

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G.I.S.M. - M.A.N. (Military Affairs Neurotic) (1987)

Punk has a long history of disparaging artists who forsake the aesthetic upon which they initially based their sound, to the extent that one of the most grievous sins a punk band can commit is to “go metal.” On one hand, this is a fairly ludicrous condemnation, as punk and metal have informed each other since the start, whether that was Lemmy playing in the Damned (or touring with Amebix), Anthrax covering Discharge, or any of the cross-genre mutations that have sprung up when less restricted musicians have seen fit to break down the oppressive and artificial boundaries established by the more tight-assed in their midst. On the other hand, while examples of punk bands who have turned towards more metallic tendencies are legion, examples of bands who have done it well are few. This was the sort of jumping ship that produced SSD's How We Rock, Discharge's Grave New World, and everything Corrosion of Conformity did after 1986 (amongst many others). This, however, isn't to say that no bands could make the transition, and it would take one of the most abrasive and extreme to do it well.

Tokyo's G.I.S.M were among the first punk bands to pop up in Japan, having started in 1980. Their music showed some metallic tendencies from the start, but the performances were chaotic and the recording quality of early releases leaned towards a low enough fidelity that most specific components of their sound were difficult to discern. Early releases like Detestation possessed a ramshackle energy that manages to be menacing in the way that many such bands aspire to and few achieve (aided in no small part by the violent propensities of singer Sakevi Yokohama. Then there's the broken English of songs like “Endless Blockades For The Pussyfooter” and “(Tere Their) Syphilitic Vaginas To Pieces” [sic] – titles that may not have made much sense on a conscious level, but on a visceral level are difficult to top.

The band's follow-up, 1987's M.A.N. (Military Affairs Neurotic) – the band loved their acronyms, with even their name variously representing Guerrilla Incendiary Sabotage Mutineers, God In The Schizophrenic Mind, Gnostic Idiosyncrasy Sonic Militant, and other monikers that may or may not make sense – was not as well-received. The songs were slower with more emphasis on melody, the production values somewhat cleaner, the approach more varied. Even die-hard G.I.S.M fans often have a hard time with M.A.N as it is often seen as work that lacks the abrasive gut punch of Detestation, but listening to the album clear of preconceptions reveals that these judgments are unduly harsh – while it may not have been the manic whirlwind of misanthropy and distortion that characterized its predecessor, it's actually a prescient metal album characterized by a marriage of guitar harmonies and shrieked vocals that would resonate throughout the metal world in the decades to come.

It's easy to try boiling M.A.N down to a formula – Iron Maiden guitars, vocals not far removed from the early Scandinavian black metal bands starting to make noise half a world away, and galloping drums all captured in the sort of tinny, reverb-heavy production preferred by discerning low-budget metal bands of the day. And that's a large chunk of what was going on with the album, but it's not quite the apt summation it might at first seem. What is most easily ignored is that M.A.N was imbued with a songwriting sense that many such bands fail to grasp. The songs weren't just a string of riffs, they were compositions that ebbed and flowed under their propulsive thrust. It's an attention to structure that's imbued in the album as a whole as well, not simply the individual songs. The record builds and releases tension, with the occasional eerie interlude that sounds not far removed from the creepier moments of Whitehouse or Throbbing Gristle. It was an embrace of structure and melody as a means of pushing an extreme agenda rather than as a step down the road to selling out and it was one that, while not always appreciated by their fans, was a testament to the band's creative power.

There's little question that their earliest work inspired legions of crustier hardcore bands but it's difficult to say what influence the band's later work had on metal bands that ended up playing music with similar characteristics. Whether G.I.S.M was aware of these bands is a matter of debate, but the fact that drummer Ironfist Tatsushima has played in traditional black metal band SSORC suggests that, at some point at least, there were some dots connected. Conversely, it's not hard to hear echoes of M.A.N in early Dissection or At The Gates, though such bands may or may not have been aware of G.I.S.M's work and definitely lacked their versatility, experimental tendencies, and sonic menace. Ultimately, G.I.S.M was always a cult band, one shrouded in mystery and notoriety, the type spoken of in reverent terms out of equal parts love and fear. Their influence might rear its head from time to time in unexpected places, but they constantly challenged both their detractors and supporters, making some killer records in the process.

--

G.I.S.M. - M.A.N. (Military Affairs Neurotic)

HEMDALE - RAD JACKSON (Discography, 2002)

Yep, it's pretty generic (albeit high-quality) goregrind, and yeah, there's a bunch of corny/funny/stupid/grotesque movie samples, and sure, most of 37 songs here are only a minute or so long, and indeed, there is a zombie holding a cat on the front cover, and yes, this compilation bears the unfortunately mundane title Rad Jackson, and of course, song titles like "Buried Under A Pile Of Zombie Dung", "Demented Surgical Incest", "Licking Mental Patients Cum Off The Sheets", "Tasty Hemorrhoidal Tissue", and "Bathing In Mucus And Bile" are present, and yeah, maybe they do a Napalm Death cover or two, but lighten up, bro. I guarantee you've seen stupider things on this blog before.
Anyway, like other champions of low-brow stupidity Nunslaughter and Embalmer (anyone else remember the "Necro-Filing Cabinet"?), Hemdale came from good old Cleveland, Ohio, and released only a string of splits and ill-fated demos during the years of their "actual" existence, 1993 to 1998. Relapse scooped them up posthumously and put together the incomplete discography known as Rad Jackson in '02, as well as signing a bunch of bands from drummer Craig Rowe's label Visceral Productions when that enterprise tanked as well (Nile and Exhumed were alumni under the Visceral banner). But enough Death Metal History 101. If you're in the mood for some really fucking dumb semi-comedic splattergrind, maybe Hemdale is just the band to kill off a couple brain cells today.
Man, WTF is wrong with Cleveland anyway?



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Metallum/Last.FM