Two weeks worth of music crammed in here due to vacation - also due to vacation is a lack of New Releases. I'm loading up three weeks worth of those for next review before getting back into the regular swing. This week though - 10 albums from all across the board.
Adding To The Collection:
Neko Case & Her Boyfriends - The Virginian
Label: Blood Shot Records
Released: 1999
Genre: Country
This is Neko Case's first full album, and it's not very typical country. Coming right at the start of the 00's alt-country explosion, it's laced with heavy doses of rockabilly and other throw-backs to 1950s country that got close to rock'n'roll and hadn't migrated too far from the blues. The sound isn't as completely polished as later albums, but for a first effort this little number is excellent.
ZZ Top - Recycler
Label: Warner Bros. Records
Released: 1990
Genre: Blues-Rock
Moving onto a similar genre, blues rock trio ZZ Top put this out in 1990 and is last part of the Eliminator-Afterburner-Recycler triology that summed up their 1980s sound. It was a move away from some of the more straight forward blues they built themselves up with in the 70s and by this album had refined itself into an almost straight alt-rock with blues mixed in sound. Nothing particularly fast, or slow. In fact, unless you're more than a casual ZZ Top fan there's not a lot here. It does contain the massive hit My Head's In Mississippi, but the production mix isn't as good as some later remasters, I don't think.
Skream - Skream!
Label: Tempa
Released: 2006
Genre: Dubstep
Not quite early dubstep, but definitely near the front of the pack, and it's not nearly as distortion heavy on the breaks. Low key, kind of down tempo, but still hits the dance floor nice and hard. It could do with a few more really heavy beats and breaks tossed in somewhere in the middle. Still, a nice shift in the dubstep from heavy to mellow.
Overkill - Bloodletting
Label: Metal-Is
Released: 2000
Genre: Thrash Metal
The last album from Overkill's less than stellar 1990s era. They managed to get stuck in a more slowed down metal sound, less thrash and more groove, and this is them stepping back up, but not completely, into a much heavier pure thrash metal sound. Hard to find these days, but still worth it for the die-hard fans that either want to fill in the holes after skipping many albums (like me), or for new fans looking for older material that isn't as pure speed as the stuff released since.
Army Of The Universe - Army Of The Universe
Label: self-released
Released: 2011
Genre: Industrial
Army Of The Universe (AoU) are an Italian industrial-rock act. As much glam as industrial, they put out this mostly remix mini-album on their own. It's a good showcase of how well they remix in talented hands. They sound like they're having a lot of fun, and it's a nice stripped down almost under-produced set of sequences. Can't wait to hear more from these guys going down the road a few years. The bonus is it comes with a video for Lovedead.
Nine Inch Nails - Head Like A Hole EP
Label: TVT Recrods
Released: 1990
Genre: Industrial
Head Like A Hole is one of their really big early on songs that started to get NIN mainstream attention. And just about everybody has had a crack at remixing it as well. And this... is a really generic set of remixes for the title track, Terrible Lie, and Down In It. I picked it up cheap and used and am glad for the fact, the remixes have seriously dated themselves at this point 20 years later, and the whole single comes off as what it is: one of the many (hundreds) of singles put out with too many remixes and not enough substance. Diehard NIN fans will want it, and probably already have it.
Human Factors Lab - Pap3r
Label: self-released
Released: 2008
Genre: Industrial
This is another remix album, and it's from a band that hadn't at the time put out a full album yet to really remix from. There's a lot of remixes on here from a lot of bands (some famous, some not so much). And it shows off that HFL can be remixed into something really good (or in some cases just danceable) the band itself doesn't quite impress me with this release. It needed a few more un-remixed band originals to really make it good. Otherwise, it's just run of the mill industrial dance stuff.
Dropkick Murphy's - The Meanest Of Times
Label: Born & Bred Records
Released: 2007
Genre: Punk
I'm a huge DKM fan, and they're a band that consistently puts out the same sound without putting out the same album. The overall tone of this one is pretty negative, there's a lot of the downside of life here, as opposed to some other releases that emphasize the upside or fighting back. Title appropriate, as it really does take the listener through the meanest of times and situations. And comes out sounding like a great punk-rock record. This is bare-knuckle punk here, and while they don't have as much bagpipes as normal, it doesn't need it. Great album to keep around.
Rough Guide To Sufi Music w/ bonus Sufi Fakirs Of Bengal
Label: World Music Network
Released: 2011
Genre: Sufi
There's something about religious music, done well, that both soothes the soul and energizes the mind and body. And the Sufi music represented here does just that. I don't understand the words, but I understand the ideas they represent, the sounds are familiar and at once, completely different. This is great music just to listen to even if you don't take away the messages being presented. And a double CD of it at that, which is why I really like the Rough Guides. They always deliver and sometimes they deliver above and beyond expectations.
And that's that - all the new additions I listened to over the past two weeks. With that I almost depleted my backlog of albums to load up - not to fear, I reloaded the stack (a good chunk of it with Iggy Pop, I may just do an all Iggy week). Next week I review all the new releases I didn't get to over my vacation. Listen Hard!
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