Lines In Wax

TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION

Month: January 2017

Ghost – Opvs Eponymovs (2010)
metal rock

Ghost – Opvs Eponymovs (2010)

Ghost (or is that Ghost B.C.?) have easily become one of the most over-rated bands in modern rock and metal, and it is sometimes easy for me to forget about their fairly awesome beginnings. It would possibly be super-hipster of me to consider them to have entered the realm of plebs and rocker dads (I played this for my Dad in 2011 and he didn’t like it, FYI) but I’m gonna be unprofessional as fuck and just sweepingly generalise that everything Ghost has done Infestissumam onwards is a steaming pile of mediocre shit. As soon as I heard that fucking Abba cover, my relationship with Ghost was over. Opvs Eponymovs still exists, however. It isn’t as if I spin this thing often, but I would have considered myself a fan, and I own this on purple vinyl. I kinda saw it as everything I ever wanted King Diamond to be, and I was initially charmed with the band’s image and kooky occult rock songs. On Opvs, Ghost played fun, quirky rock that was as infectious as it was stupefying. Case in point, “The Night Of The Witch”, with one of the hammiest choruses ever written, is also one of the greatest things ever put to tape. The same can be said for “Prime Mover”, and even “Elizabeth”, to a degree. “Genesis” is a fantastic instrumental song and a perplexing closer to the album. I play this and remember the good ol’ days, as I sit in my rocking chair with my whiskey and my hipster beard. Sometimes I like to think how much money Lee Dorrian has made off this band, but sometimes I can be a pointless asshole. Next!

Napalm Death – Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)
death metal

Napalm Death – Fear, Emptiness, Despair (1994)

Downwards! I had a strange feeling to go and listen to all the oft-forgotten mid-career “groovy” Napalm records recently. In one day I chained this along with the three that followed it, and out of all the “non-grind” records the band put out, I can still confirm that Fear Emptiness Despair is my favorite. Perhaps that is just a subconscious thing though, as four tracks from this record appeared on the “best of” record that Earache put out (Noise For Music’s Sake) and “Twist The Knife (Slowly)” was bizarrely featured on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack. Subjectively though, I feel that Fear Emptiness Despair *fits* into the Napalm Death discography, and whilst, yes, the three albums that follow it are logical progressions of this type of sound, they strike a form of duality where I feel they simply do not fit into the logical progression of Napalm Death. I don’t mean it as a diss, but reflecting back, I can’t see how the dots were joined, especially as the band performed a neck-snapping side step back into grindcore with Enemy Of The Music Business soon after. Regardless of my weird feelings, Fear Emptiness Despair has the best production out of the four “groovy” records and also is by far the heaviest. Check it out below x7. 

Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 3 (2016)
hip hop

Run The Jewels – Run The Jewels 3 (2016)

Run The Jewels 3 is the hotly anticipated return of – and third full length release from – the legendary hip hop duo Run The Jewels. First off, I just want to comment on how awesome that cover art is. I’ve seen a lot of people on various online mediums posting about how shit it is but I think it is the best RTJ cover yet (even better than Meow The Jewels haha). Anyways, this is a solid fuckin’ record and it continues to expand on the sound that Run The Jewels are known for. Throw in a few choice guest appearances (my favorite of which is the abstract verse provided by the excellent Danny Brown) and a few oddly spaced out, experimental beats and you’ve got everything you need from RTJ and more. It is rare for bands to continue delivering knock-out performances album after album after album, but I firmly believe that once the dust has settled around RTJ3, is will stand in its place in time just as good as, if not better than, the records that preceded it. Standout tracks for me are: “Hey Kids” (the one with Danny B), “Stay Gold”, “Thieves”, “Oh Mama” and “A Report To The Shareholders”.

Baltra – オメガ (2017)
electronic

Baltra – オメガ (2017)

Baltra is a deep house artist from New York, and an オメガ (appears) to be a single-tracked EP with very little information available about it (it is even missing from the artist’s Bandcamp page, as well as having no listing on Discogs, whose users are usually on the ball with this type of shit). (2020 edit: appears to have been eventually released as part of this a year later: https://www.discogs.com/Baltra-Cant-Explain-It/release/12586745) オメガ (translating simply to Omega) offers a pleasing meeting of styles; the hypnotic development and repetition of the deep house beats is married exquisitely with the aching, nostalgic melodies of vaporwave. There is an overall lo-fi vibe to the sound too, which melds the whole thing together perfectly as a whole. There’s only so much I can say about one track, so instead please listen 😀

Timeghoul – Panaramic Twilight (1994)
death metal

Timeghoul – Panaramic Twilight (1994)

(Mad apologies for snatching this cover art from Demo Archives, but there is literally not a decent scan of this anywhere else. Anyways Demo Archives is a really cool site that you should consider checking out) Panaramic Twilight is the second demo from shamefully short-lived death metal act Timeghoul. The brutality and the distorted, nightmarish sounds of the band’s first offering, Tumultuous Travelings, is distilled and refined into a more streamlined and cleaner yet fantastically proficient record. The fact that this is an early 90s death metal cassette demo is astounding; the production quality is fantastic and the band really feel in their element. The band were onto something really special here, and it is a crying shame that they disbanded not long afterwards. (2020 edit: they did not disband until 2005, but they released no more recordings into the world.)

50 Cent – Before I Self Destruct (2009)
hip hop

50 Cent – Before I Self Destruct (2009)

Before I Self Destruct starts off promising as hell before falling off in the second half, gradually getting worse and worse until it closes with one of the worst songs ever written; “Could’ve Been You” parades out R Kelly like a secret ace card, but when the dickhead is literally crooning about smelling his own shit (no joke) in the chorus, all credibility goes out the fucking window. Shame he couldn’t smell the shit coming outta his mouth when he recorded this fucking farce of a track. Anyway, I’ve jumped right to the end, so let’s back up a bit. We have a few stand out tracks, especially towards the beginning of the album. There’s also a half decent collab with Eminem on “Psycho” (wow look, Em is singing about being a mentalist, how original!) but other than that, this thing is as shit and pointless as the movie 50 Cent made with the same name. Kudos to the record title though, as this thing definitely makes me want to force dynamite down my throat and light the fuse.

Landfill – Landfill (2017)
grindcore

Landfill – Landfill (2017)

Landfill are a grindcore / powerviolence band from Lima, Ohio and asides from a three minute demo in 2016 and a 30-second track on a compilation, this self-titled EP is the world’s first proper taste of the filth that they have to offer. The longest song (by far) is the opening track “Zen And The Art Of Shitting Teeth”, with its sludgy beginning and descent into grinding chaos. The majority of the remaining tracks are microblasts of violence that are reminiscent of stuff like Insect Warfare, earlier Flesh Parade or even UxDxS. Rounding the whole thing off is four minutes of harsh noise (technically this is the longest track, actually haha) that does, if I’m honest, seem to be tacked on for no reason. That is not to say however, that its not a decent slab of noise in its own right. Any form of sonic annihilation sits well with me. Having a smattering of grind followed by harsh noise is like eating habenero sauce for dinner and then having Blair’s 6am on your ice cream.

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)
pop rock

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody (1975)

(I don’t have a cover with my copy, but here’s a cover anyway, because I’m too good to you. Happy new year!)As ridiculous as this sounds, this 7″ will always hold a special place in my record collection. I’ve been putting off writing this post for years, mainly due to Lines In Wax evolving away from just speaking about my physical vinyl records, but also due to not really being able to face writing about Queen; a band that, for the most part, I absolutely fucking despise. Realistically though, owning this 7″ has absolutely nothing to do with Queen at all. The reason I have this 7″ is because when I was a nipper my parents used to drink at a bar that was basically in the attic of the local leisure centre. My dad worked at the centre for many years and sometimes I would get taken along to said nights out. I will always remember the bar’s jukebox; a bizarre, circular affair that seemed pretty rare as far as jukebox shapes go. I used to like watching the records as they were taken from the stacks by the machine and played on the platter. Many, many years later when I would work at the centre myself for a few years, I was surprised to see the jukebox as it was wheeled from storage. We were due to move premises and we had to empty the building of absolutely everything. My colleagues got into the habit of plugging in the machine whilst on shifts and enjoying the shaky, crackly tunes as if it was 1992 all over again. I made many inquiries into what the fate of the jukebox was to be, and if it was somehow possible that I could purchase the jukebox for myself. The manager at the time told me that it was going to be taken for refurbishment and sold on to specialists for a profit. Sad, but I could live with that. A few months later I was finishing up a shift at the centre. I was dragging two black bags of rubbish out to the bins, and after I opened the fire doors, I looked up to see a sight that made my heart sink. In the skip where all the junk from the move had been thrown, was the jukebox, face up. Two builders who had been working on the new centre had pried the face off the thing and it was in pieces. To add insult to injury, they were stood over the broken machine, harvesting the 7″ records and flinging them across the river like frisbees. I was shaking with rage, but I managed to run over and save a bag-full of soaking wet 7″s (I must have looked a right nutter), most of which were damaged beyond any reasonable use. The three that survived and that I still have to this day include this copy of “Bohemian Rhapsody”, “O Carolina” by Shaggy and Iron Maiden featuring Mr. Bean (yes! lol) covering Alice Cooper’s “Elected”. Popular Culture tells me that Bohemian Rhapsody is one of Queen’s most well known tunes. Personally, I fucking hate it, especially when people try to drunk-sing their way through it. But, I will never get rid of this single. Not a review as such, but a bit of Lines In Wax backstory as a change of pace. Normal service returns tomorrow!