Eight Arms

Found something for an All Hallows Eve post.

Daisy Chain were a mediocre mid-80's garage band from germany featuring a great singer with Debbie Harry hairdo and a raspy voice (reminding me of Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux, so really raspy). Jani - thats the girl's name - would have deserved a better, more focused band.
Still, on "Do What Thou Wilt" (Don't know if they were Crowley fans - actually on the cover shots, they look like some provincial cult members) there are a few pearls to be found.
"Love to Live" f.i. is a blazing garage rocker:

Daisy Chain - Love to Live

"Eight Arms" on the other hand is something all together different. A run of the mill piano-ballad, that starts innocently enough with "what your love means to me, you will never know, what your love means to me, I will try to show", once it gets to the chorus things get a bit creepy:

I got eight arms to hold you baby
I got eight arms to care for you,
Oh just say you love me too
And I'll give my love to you

Daisy Chain - Eight Arms

Those Who Survived The Plague

Fans of roaches and Fearless Iranians from Hell, Those Who Survived The Plague were a constitutive part of the early-nineties Hardcore-scene in Austria. With boy/girl shouting/screeching backed by competent musicians (like Mops, who was already part of Target of Demand, the first austrian Dischord-influenced HC-band) who knew how to deliver the punches, they were a really energetic ensemble that fell between the camps of metallic moshers like KURORT (another brilliant band - granite-heavy Slayer-riffing and singing in a strange upper-austrian-german) and the "Linz D.C."-bands (who again got their moniker from their Dischord sound, popularized by Rainer Krispels Target of Demand and their friends).

Try this one:
TWSTP - 501
"Separate the men from the boys - give, give, give me the boys!" (Ain't this the problem - that there are only boys left?)

Another one, you'll find in the last post, below the fotos.


The whole set:

Those Who Survived The Plague - Get Rid Of

Krieg

2006 wurden in Wien 6000 Fahräder gestohlen. Gestohlene Räder warten im Schauraum der Straße auf Käufer, werden sukzessive ausgeweidet und von der Meute der frustrierten Autofahrer demoliert. Auch bei noch ungestohlenem Fahrrad mußt du damit rechnen, daß es dir zertreten wird, läßt du es in den Nachtstunden draußen stehen.




Destroyed by carsexuals, marauding through the streets at night, archenemies of man and bike...

The finest Austrian Hardcore band in the early nineties:
Those Who Survived The Plague - Carsexuals

Tally Ho!

The Surf Box - Vol.1
It may not be driven by blast beats and double bass, still one could find similarities between Surf music and Black Metal - the main one being the tremolo guitar picking, which lends itself to impressionistic land/seascape painting. Also, in its manifestation as instrumental music, Surf often evokes dark and mysterious themes, rather than images of sunkissed beachbeauties - the sea is a dangerous place after all. (Don't think one can compare the clientele for the genres, though...)

This compilation, I found in the cutout-bin and it is a cheapo-sampler , not identical with the Rhino 4-disc set of the same name, so it contains mostly stuff from the 80ies, live-material and rerecorded, even three cheesy Disco-"Surf" pieces. Nonetheless there is some classic stuff here with The Belairs, The Frogmen and most of all PJ & The Galaxies with "Tally Ho". Well, "Tally Ho" is not of the "dark and mysterious" kind, rather the opposite - it's hard to find a brighter song on this planet. In this respect it only has to compete with another "Tally Ho", the one from the New Zealanders The Clean, also one of the great wonders on this earth and a different song.
(Still another "Tally Ho!" can be found on the Trustar-Vibrations-Blog in the Surf Coasters post. Of course I had to download it, and I have to report, while retaining the connection with the origin of the expression in fox-hunting, the song hasn't quite the class of the other two Tally Hos.)

The "PJ" of The Galaxies is one Paul Johnson, who was a founding member of The Belairs, one of the first surf groups (1960) in Southern California - "Mr. Moto" arguably being the first surf single - before taking over guitar with The Galaxies in 1964. Paul Johnson seems to be quite a legendary figure - this is his website: http://www.pjmoto.com/index.html

01 - The Marketts - Out Of Limits.mp3
02 - The T-Bones - No Matter What Shape.mp3
03 - Jan&Dean - It's Such A Good Night For Dreaming.mp3
04 - The Halibuts - Mr. Mysterioso.mp3
05 - The Lively Ones - Southern Surf.mp3
06 - John Blair w The Eliminators - Depth Charge.mp3
07 - The Tornadoes - Bustin' Surfboards.mp3
08 - The Chantays - Crystal T.mp3
09 - The Frogmen - Underwater.mp3
10 - The Ventures - Pipeline.mp3
11 - Mike Gordon & The Agates - Rumble At New Port Beach.mp3
12 - The Challengers - K-39.mp3
13 - PJ & The Galaxies - Tally Ho.mp3
14 - The Belairs - Mr. Moto.mp3
15 - The Paul Johnson Band feat Randy Mitchell -
Sleepwalk.mp3
16 - The Routers - Caravan.mp3

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Here´s the whole set on uploaded.to (available for 90 days after the last download and rather fast most of the times):

The Surf Box - Vol.1

Two songs on Box.net:
John Blair w/ The Eliminators - Depth Charge
PJ & The Galaxies- Tally Ho

And The Clean´s Tally Ho:
The Clean - Tally Ho
(Now get over to Kiwi Tapes and get EVERYTHING you can by the Clean, for Goodness sake!)

Sangraal - Unearthly Night

This one was posted on the MisanthropianS-Blog, a place for the more obscure and unknown Black Fucking Metal and this fantastic US-band really is a discovery , and better than most of the big names. With short songs, usually clocking in under the 3 minute mark, they use not just the tremolo-blizzard-formula but every other song is of the sluggish riff-heavy variety (with riffs so simple, even I could play them, which endears the band all the more to me). Their biggest asset may be their real live drummer (can´t be taken for granted with the "underground-kvlt-hordes" - drummers are a rare breed), who´s pounding away on his skins with real gusto.

So hop on over to MisanthropianS to get this wonderful and energetic piece of Krawall.

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Here are two songs to get you hooked:

a fast one:

Sangraal - Relic of Disease

and a slow one:

Sangraal - Unearthly Night

Greatest Black Metal Titles - a List

And I'm talking here about the Songtitles, not the songs (which may be rather crappy). Some I wrote down a while ago without adding the group's name.

In no particular order:
+ Wälder im Zorn (Forests in Anger)- Nebelmacht
+ Raped by Light
+ Tue aus das Licht (Do shut off the Light)
+ Tot bleibt tot
+ Bäche des Bösen (Brooks of Evil) - Leichenschlacht
+ Suffer the Gestalt - Mütiilation
+ The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem - Nargaroth
+ Amarok - Zorn des Lammes III - Nargaroth
+ Deutsches Leid (German Grief)- Rabennacht
+ Bösäugig Gutgestrüpp (Evileyed Goodscrub) - Seelenaether
+ Rundgang um die transzendentale Säule der Singularität - Burzum
(It may be electronic-ambient but for it's sheer pretentiousness it has to be part of the list)
+ Schuld uns'res knöchrigen Faltpferd - Bethlehem

An den Ahnfurten

Nargaroth, Amarok - Zorn des Lammes III
Look, whats been swept ashore: It´s the third installment in the epic Amarok - Zorn des Lammes (Wrath of the Lamb - What a title) - a fairly atypical song from Nargaroth's concept-album (the concept being the celebration of all things Old-School-Black-Metal) Black Metal Ist Krieg (Black Metal Is War - Oh, how we laughed). In the first minutes it's more of a gothic lament with man and woman duetting ("Kanwulf"/Nargaroth - the master of deceit- claims in his comments to the album, that no girl has been singing on this tune - must have been some restless soul from the beyond) without instrumental accompaniment, only the sound of thunderstorm and waves crashing in the background, before turning to harsher means.

I have seen the wrath of the land,
as I wandered like a wolf among the
sheep.
I was a part of the wrath of the lamb,
so I am a part of the
wolf.
Oh I am the wolf, oh I am the lamb,
so I am (fuck) Satan and I'm
(fuck) God.
Call me now Judas or call me insane,
I am what I am, I'm
just a men/man.
Call me now Judas or call me insane,
I am what I am, I'm
just a men/man.
Fuck yeah, arrghh...
I am a men/man.

In his comments to the album Kanwulf refers to the motivation for the song in seeing T-Shirts with slogans like "I shit on being German" and "I was proud to be German" (depicting a decomposed corpse), which indicates to him the deplorable state of national pride, which the creator of "German Hateful Metal" obviously rather resents (his stuff is released by No Colours Records, a german Nazi-Metal-label):

Dieses Land scheint unter einer Art Trauma bezüglich eines
Teils unserer Geschichte, bzw. der nationalen Identität zu
leiden Anzeigen dafür sind zum Beispiel im Verkauf von T-Shirts
mit der Aufschrift "Ich scheiße darauf ein Deutscher zu sein"
auszumachen. Mir ist kein anderes Land bekannt, welches eine
derartige Selbstverleundung betreibt und dies auch noch
kommerziel zu nutzen scheint.
Der Gipfel all dessen endete meines Erachtens in der
publikation eines T-Shirts auf dem eine zum Teil verweste
Leiche zu sehen ist und welche mit dem Worten "Ich war stolz
ein Deutscher zu sein" versehen wurde.(...) Aber auch wenn
man es anders interpretieren kann, sehe ich darin auch die
Verleugnung einer verheizten, verleugneten und allzu gern
vergessenen Generation unseres Landes. Ich rede von den
deutschen Soldaten der/des Weltkrieges.

So Kanwulf is dedicating his song to "the fallen sons and daughters of his family":

Im speziellen widme ich dieses Lied den gefallenen Söhnen und
Töchtern aus meiner Familie, welche im ersten WK ihr Leben
ließen, mit 17 Jahren in Russland in einem Panzer verbrannten,
in belgien fielen oder, bezüglich der weiblichen Gefallenen,
sich nach einer mehrfachen Vergewaltigung selbst das Leben
nahmen.

http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/nargaroth/blackmetalistkrieg.html#8
After reading his comments and interviews it´s easy to make a diagnosis of the guy´s character: obviously a narcissistic personality, forever stuck in an adolescent state, suffering from delusions of grandeur. That makes him one of the more entertaining screwheads in the genre.

Nargaroth-debunking-site, almost as funny in its earnestness as the guy himself (in german):
http://nargaroth.shaddai.name/

Warrior Kanwulf appears on the afternoon-talkshow "Sonja" in a leather miniskirt, his flatmate is having problems with his ways and "gets sick, when seeing him":




And here is the song:
Nargaroth - Zorn des Lammes III

This Heat - Sleep

Wir eröffnen mit dem schönsten Song von This Heat, der ersten Nummer ihres zweiten Albums "Deceit".
Seit es meinen auditiven Kortex Anfang der 90er erreicht hat, als mir König Ostermayer dieses Stück in einer "Musicbox" vorgespielt hat, steh ich unter seinem Bann und laß es mir regelmäßig durchs Hirn mäandern.

sleep, sleep, sleep, go to sleep,
sleep go to sleep,
you are now in a
deep sleep

in store promises, endless possibilities,
a life of ease, a life
cocooned in a routine of food

stimulus and response, softness is a thing called comfort,
it doesn't cost much to keep in touch, we never forget you have a choice

possibilities in store, a taste of paradise,
success on a plate for you, endless promises

(Ein Traum schickt dir ein Schlaflied ins Wache)
Außer dem Eingangsmantra habe ich immer nur einige Fetzen aus dem Text verstanden: "endless possibilities","endless promises" und "a taste of paradise" versprachen ozeanische Weite; "success on a plate for you" verwies dann jedoch auf eine kritische Haltung zur bequemen Entfremdung im Spätkapitalismus von 1981 und paßte nicht so ganz zu der ersehnten Wohltat des naiven Schlaflieds - als solches hab ich es mir aber dann angeeignet, als einen Schlafzauber, der nur leider nie nennenswerte Wirkung entfaltet hat, sooft ich auch über die drei Stufen - sleep, sleep, sleep - hinuntergestiegen bin.
Aber was schreib ich da von 1981, das Jahr hört man ja gar nicht aus der Musik heraus - das wahrhaft Besondere an This Heat ist ja, daß Bullen/Hayward da wirklich eine eigene Musik mit eigenem Sound zustande gebracht haben, die man in der Popgeschichte nirgends so recht unterbringen kann - ein zeitloser Sound also womöglich, und gerade Sleep schien mir immer aus einer zeit- wie ortlosen Volksmusik zu stammen, einer geträumten Folkmusic, viel reicher, feiner und glaubhafter geträumt als das die Residents mit ihren erfundenen Ethnographien je zusammen gebracht haben.

sleep, sleep, sleep, go to sleep, sleep, go to sleep,
you are now in a deep
sleep

listen!