Grindcore pioneers Napalm Death were one of the fastest bands ever. Perverse logic would therefore dictate that when vocalist Lee Dorrian left in 1989, he would form the slowest, most detuned and dirge-like doom-metal outfit ever to plod this increasingly mortal coil. Thus the monstrously heavy Cathedral arose from the deepest bowels of the British…
One of the most influential rock bands to emerge in the 1980s, California’s uncompromising Metallica rose from humble origins to affect the attitudes of a generation, its bone-crunching grooves and punkish fuck-that-shit ideology providing the backdrop to contemporary teenage wasteland. Although the once-magnificent quartet has since settled into stadium-rock routine — a semi-ossified state of…
On the flawed and unfocused Museum, Atlanta’s Mary My Hope simply tried to do and be too much, as shades of the Beatles, Doors, Pink Floyd, Bauhaus, R.E.M. and U2 flit through the overly ambitious songs, resulting in two killer tracks (“Suicide King” and “Communion”), several near-misses and several clunkers. Producer Hugh Jones does little…
Spawned in early 1992 in the unlikely locale of Dallas, Bedhead was an early harbinger of the mid-’90s slowcore semi-movement. The key word here is “languid,” even when the quartet (guitar-playing brothers Bubba and Matt Kadane, bassist Kris Wheat and drummer Trini Martinez) is playing hard: Matt’s lazy vocals, the unhurried tempos and intricately interwoven…
One of the great diplomatic challenges facing underground rockers in the mid-’80s was how to repeal the punk era’s edict against guitar heroics (which actually did nothing to undercut the instrument’s hegemony, except to shelve it for a brief synth-pop sabbatical) without raising suspicions of cultural revisionism or unseemly nostalgia. In a gambit that proved…
Led by California-born, Michigan-raised and Phoenix resident singer-guitarist Gerald Collier, this snappily monickered band started off as a beautifully scrawny fusion of Cheap Trick/Replacements pop brawn, but quickly lost inspiration, degenerating into tepid riffs and tired melodies. By then based in Seattle, the quartet made its debut with a 7-inch (“Take Me Home,” which brilliantly…
The rote replay of the ersatz Clash’s Cut the Crap only underscored the accomplishment of Mick Jones’ subsequent band, originally formed with filmmaker-musician Don Letts. Joe Strummer attempted to purify the Clash by purging Jones, but wound up liberating the guitarist’s muse and (for a while) misplacing his own. The original B.A.D. — which included…
Raised and originally based in Innsbruck, Austria, singer/guitarist Hans Platzgumer and bassist/singer Frank Puempel had toured Europe with several bands (and managed prolific recording careers as precocious teens) before relocating to New York in 1989 as H.P. Zinker. Recorded with a drum machine, the six-song …And There Was Light — the first-ever release on Matador…
From a marketing standpoint, Truly’s claim to fame is that it features original Soundgarden bassist Hiro Yamamoto and ex-Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel. While comparisons to both of those bands (and other Seattle peers) are inevitable, there’s a lot more to Truly than its family tree. The band’s focal point is Robert Roth, whose dark,…
Glasgow’s unique but extremely slow-moving (four albums in 20 years!) Blue Nile has a wealth of creative depth, building atmosphere with lots of empty space and carefully controlled conflicting musical maneuvers. The title track of the trio’s first album mixes strings, horns, drum and bass with a meandering, disjunct vocal for something like a blend…
Hailing from the upstate college town of Syracuse, New York, Masters of Reality began in the early ’80s as a semi- electronic duo of vocalist Chris Goss and guitarist Tim Harrington; the name is evidence that the band has always taken a certain delight in being defiantly out of step with the times. By its…
A melodic mixture of psychedelia and ’60s garage-rock has made the Screaming Trees, spawned in remote Ellensburg, Washington, one of the most influential, atypical and under-rated bands to spring from the Northwest. Highlighted by Mark Lanegan’s deep, mournful voice and Gary Lee Conner’s snarling guitar work, the Trees conjure reverent but never derivative visions of…
The Associates — Billy Mackenzie (most words and all vocals, eventually everything) and Alan Rankine (most music and all instruments except drums) — once attempted brilliance, but later settled for playing at being clever. The Affectionate Punch boldly tried to stake a claim for some of the no-man’s land between Bowie’s theatrical, tuneful rock and…
Switzerland’s Young Gods are nothing if not ambitious. Grafting rock, classical and electronic influences, the group’s unusual vocals/sampler/drums configuration reconstructs rock from the ground up, producing a fiery collage of roaring guitars, blistering rhythms and Wagnerian orchestras, all presided over by Franz Treichler’s leering, guttural voice. Irreverent, abrasive and years ahead of its time, the…
As a historical note, Seattle quintet Kill Sybil — initially just Sybil, the name under which the group issued a 1991 single — once had future Hole batterer Patty Schemel sitting on its drum throne. (Her brother Larry Schemel was one of the band’s two guitarists.) Her drumming on two tracks, however, is not the…
Charming despite frequent bouts of pretentiousness, Welsh-born singer/songwriter Julian Cope (once in a crypto-band called the Crucial Three with future-Echo icon Ian McCulloch and future-Wah! man Pete Wylie) led Liverpool’s great psychedelic hope, The Teardrop Explodes, through two albums before moving on — in the midst of an aborted third — to a solo career.…
“Bones and blood lie on the ground/Rotten limbs lie dead/Decapitated bodies found/On my wall: your head!” Whether you find these lyrics brilliant, hilarious, moronic, repulsive or genuinely evil (or all of the above) is a nearly foolproof barometer of how you’ll feel about Slayer. A more hateful breed than homeboys Metallica or Megadeth, Slayer was…
Kyuss was spawned on the wrong side of the tracks in the country club oasis of Palm Desert, California; lacking anything resembling a club scene, the band honed its chops playing “generator parties” in the desert (presumably scattering gila monsters for miles around), emerging with a parched and blistering sound at the vortex where Black…
Fans of Chicago’s Material Issue cite the late singer/guitarist (and early Green member) Jim Ellison’s seemingly effortless knack for writing brisk, unforgettable hard-pop tunes. Detractors point to his annoyingly affected British accent and that his songs (while enjoyable) can seem a bit too calculated. There’s something to be said for both arguments, but there’s no…
This Mortal Coil is one of the few recording groups to give the word “pretentious” a positive meaning. A loose, studio-only entity orbiting around 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell and producer John Fryer, TMC was initially (despite protestations to the contrary) a 4AD house band, employing members of the Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Wolfgang Press,…
