Search Results for "Ian Christe"

Although 1992 brought more than enough repetitive post-hardcore records from brand-name indie labels Amphetamine Reptile and Touch and Go, Sub Pop still saw fit to sponsor this Providence-based cabal of smart boys in space suits. Emulating an amped-up and emotionally overwrought Joy Division on the four-track debut, the laddies — founders John MacLean (guitar) and…

This quirky Brooklyn combo was formed at the urging of Wm. Berger (here playing drums), who recognized creative sparkle in modern dancer Linda Hagood and encouraged her to take up guitar and songwriting. The duo was joined by bassist Alec Stephens on Queen Crab, a wonderful collection of light, idiosyncratic material like “Big Planet,” “Lucky”…

This hyper-aggressive New York foursome ambitiously pushes the death metal genre to new limits by amplifying the speed and terror while incorporating outside influences like hardcore techno and power tools. Such growth in grindcore comes courtesy singer/journalist Kevin Sharp and bassist Dan Lilker, notable for co-founding and then quitting Anthrax, Nuclear Assault and the infamous…

With so many gory alienation fantasies in death metal, it’s difficult to find the truly fine-grade chops. Brujeria are incendiary Spanish-language death-grind raiders who deal with the everyday gore of life in Latin America. (The mysterious group seems to make its albums only during periods when members of Fear Factory, Faith No More and Napalm…

Napalm Death drummer Mick “Human Tornado” Harris started toying with computers around the same time as some former bandmates, but the results — in Scorn — are more at odds with his tenure as an indefatigable one-man battery squad. Recorded after Harris had already joined Bill Laswell and John Zorn in Painkiller, the first Scorn…

Toting a suitcase full of vaudevillian tricks and the endorsement of They Might Be Giants, Brooklyn’s Drink Me indulges in the charm of animated ditties about singing clams, vocalizing trees, Grant’s Tomb, barnacle-encrusted whales and comforting cups of coffee on its self-titled debut. Cherishing fragile creatures and passing moments of beauty (“St. Monday” simply recounts…

Beme Seed singer Kathleen Lynch was “the Stripper,” whose stage antics helped propel Butthole Surfers to infamy. In most ways, her band is on its own plane — the quartet opened an entire tour for the Surfers simply by showing up at gigs unannounced, setting up and playing. Lacking the minimal organization of even the…

On a long-term mission to confront, confuse and ultimately comfort its battle-scarred audience, Three Day Stubble combines the most eccentric extremes of Houston (the band’s birthplace) and San Francisco (its adopted home). Dressed in garish clashing polyester plaids, the group’s self-actualization campaign has sometimes been hindered by the false impression that its music is a…

Originally known, with a different drummer, as Bah Gah Brothers (the name under which the trio issued Is There a Doctor in the Fish?), Cycomotogoat surfaced during the heyday of self-conscious ’70s revivalism yet comes off like the real thing on its lengthy self-released EP. The Hoboken trio’s dirty boogie suggests a well-preserved Blue Cheer,…

Gleefully depicting the life of deviants and incompetents, Austin’s Crust explores dementia with sound in the great tradition of Black Sabbath (depression), Black Flag (psychosis) and the Butthole Surfers (schizophrenia). Sacred Heart of Crust offers convoluted industrial Mexican dirges like “Tiny Shoes” and the screaming short-wave radio funk of “Black Tuesday.” The trio’s buzz seems…

A pillar of New York’s hybrid art/jazz/rock universe, the prolific Zeena Parkins has appeared on dozens of albums with Tom Cora, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp and John Zorn. She and Cora jointly invented the electric harp, an amplified tension machine that became her trademark as a member of the unconventional Skeleton Crew. In 1986, Parkins…

Hailing from New York’s Lower East Side, durable anti-folk bard Paleface served up a brilliant self-titled debut in 1991. With a booming acoustic guitar and a bit of country twang, Paleface is a punk rocker reborn as urban homesteader. His plaintive voice hustles brash strumming through a cleverly worded outpouring of ruminations on sidewalks, heartbreak…

Bassist/producer Bill Laswell and alto sax abuser John Zorn are bosses of the New York vanguard, with long careers built on adventurous collaborations and cultural adaptations. So maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that when they finally got together, it was with Mick Harris, drum demon of Napalm Death, to conjure an excited…

One of New York’s least glamorous and most under-publicized bands is also one of its most musically adventurous and rewarding. Although properly included on ROIR’s New York Scum Rock compilation, Fly Ashtray are not prickly post-punkers but friendly purveyors of a warped noodle fuzz. Formed at Fordham University in the Bronx by guitarist/singer/bassist John Beekman,…

Just as they missed the boat with rap, the champions of “alternative” music refused to acknowledge a new alternative several years later when it arose from the English hinterlands in the form of grindcore, a virulent mutation of the most extreme elements of hardcore, metal and industrial. This blurred sonic cesspool just might be the…

Unlike labelmates Die Kreuzen and Scratch Acid — who were merely abrasive and unsettling — Detroit’s Laughing Hyenas were, at the outset anyway, an actively threatening outgrowth of Midwestern hardcore. Banshee John Brannon (ex-Negative Approach) rolled his eyes back in his head and smashed mics into his teeth; dressed in bad-luck tattoos, the scowling Kevin…

Claiming the solitary influence of “Caroliner — the Famous Singing Bull of the 1800’s,” San Francisco’s Caroliner is one of America’s most original and difficult musical entities. Vaguely indicated by the tag “industrial bluegrass,” the vehemently indescribable band consists of futuristic Luddites in the moral center of an avant-garde for erratic minds, covering turf wider…