Lines In Wax

TWELVE YEARS OF UNWANTED OPINION

Day: June 24, 2021

Misfits – Famous Monsters (1999)
punk & hardcore

Misfits – Famous Monsters (1999)

There’s 52 ways to be a low key right wing asshat, one or two are the same, but they both work as well. I’m coming clean for the Proud Boys, my chauvinism doesn’t scream as well, and Eric Blair won’t listen all night… LOL. Famous Monsters was the second Graves-fronted Misfits album. Its much more smoother and melodic than the previous one, which is a bit faster and rougher around the edges. There are more ballads here and the second half of the album starts to drag a little bit as far as the song quality goes. I suppose you could accuse the band of being formulaic at this point but the product is so lovely and easily consumed, that it doesn’t really matter. Before I found out that Graves has heavy right-wing sympathies I watched him perform this record live, along with American Psycho. It was pretty great. Shame I can no longer associate with this fucking clown. On that note, its worth mentioning that I’ve covered artists on this site who I would never support (Satanic Warmaster springs to mind), but thats only because Lines In Wax is a personal log of everything that I have listened to. Being a Nazi isn’t cool, kids.

Black Sabbath – 13 (2013)
metal

Black Sabbath – 13 (2013)

I completely ignored 13 when it came out. I had no interest at all in the reunion, especially after the damage Sharon Osbourne has done to Sabbath over the years, effectively burying the Iommi solo years, and having Heaven And Hell form as a separate band. This is of course, barely the fucking surface of things when it comes to Sharon and her horrendous behaviour, but I digress. 13 is, simply, not very good. The songs are, for the most part, pretty solid, but the super compressed, modern sound didn’t work on Forbidden, so I’m not sure why they thought it work here, sounding even more inorganic and fake, even with Rick Rubin at the helm. Honestly, I have no time for this record. Plus, why is it called 13? Its not the thirteenth album overall or with Ozzy? Maybe Iommi considers this the 13th best Sabbath album? Ha!

t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 ‎– 現実を超えて (Beyond reality) (2014)
electronic vaporwave

t e l e p a t h テレパシー能力者 ‎– 現実を超えて (Beyond reality) (2014)

This was a special listen. I’ve come across Telepath a few times in my forays into vaporwave, but this is an earlier record. I had the pleasure of listening to somebody’s glorious double cassette upload, which contains a number of additional bonus tracks. All in all, this is a lo-fi journey through dense atmospheres (similar to genre-mate HKE) and chilled out, laid back beats and sampled tracks. It’s 90 minutes long, but its worth every second.

CD – Nagasaki Phone Matrix Translucent Beginning (2021)
electronic vaporwave

CD – Nagasaki Phone Matrix Translucent Beginning (2021)

I picked this up from a self-promoting post on Reddit. In what the artist describes as their 5th album, CD cobbles together chopped and scratchy Japanese samples in the true vaporwave / plunderphonics style. I’m not really clued up on Japanese culture at all, so I am not sure what the sources are for these sounds, in my ignorance I could take a guess at TV shows, commercial themes, and fuck knows what else. All are fractured here, often multiple times in the same track as it blends and blurs, and offer a strange listening experience. It’s like you’re out in the middle of the Pacific ocean twiddling with a long-range radio.

Disconscious ‎– Hologram Plaza (2013)
electronic vaporwave

Disconscious ‎– Hologram Plaza (2013)

Ultra pitch-shifted, slow and reminiscent of a bad acid trip. Disconscious is the soundtrack to wandering that abandoned mall in the recesses of your mind. Think of any mall today, and compare it to the glory days that you remember for that mall in the 80s or 90s. This is the soundtrack to those thoughts, which is a lot darker than its palm tree and classy car covered artwork would make it seem.

Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus (2020)
death metal

Cryptic Shift – Visitations From Enceladus (2020)

My pathetic little human brain cannot comprehend the sheer riff fuckery that is on display here. Death metal is getting more and more ambitious and the current “wave” of death revival is super fucking exciting. Enter then, Cryptic Shift, who suck a whole bunch of influences into their deathly whirlwind. This really is something special. The focus when it comes to the Visitations record is the first track, the absolutely gargantuan 25 minute epic that is “Moonbelt Immolator”, which is like some avant-garde fucking space opera. Like, what a debut! Fair play. Outstanding stuff.

The Almighty – Soul Destruction (1991)
rock

The Almighty – Soul Destruction (1991)

I’ve had this vinyl for about a decade if not longer and I’ve never really paid it any mind until now and I can see why. I was correct in my estimations that this kind of thing is simply not for me. Sure, I can take pleasure in the listening to of simple rock and or roll, but I won’t be returning for a round two.

Xasthur ‎– Telepathic With The Deceased (2004)
black metal

Xasthur ‎– Telepathic With The Deceased (2004)

Xasthur is a very depressing black metal project, this I have established firmly over several album listens in the last few years. Telepathic With The Deceased however, seems extra damp and fucking miserable and despite its fairly awful artwork, the music itself is a torrid affair of metal that sounds like it is completely and utterly done with the world. Its worth noting that in the Vice documentary on this kind of music, Xasthur becomes particularly upset when talking about this record. A small part of me wonders what it is that links him so to such a harrowing piece of work.

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (1973)
avant-garde rock

Mike Oldfield – Tubular Bells (1973)

Tubular Bells is a fucking mad one, if you stop and think about. Like, I don’t know why the first part of this very uplifting and experimental journey was used in the unsettling as fuck movie The Exorcist (I’m sure Oldfield’s record label wasn’t complaining, sales wise!), but there we go. The “famous five minutes” aside, Tubular Bells is a mammoth release, where variations on a theme are looped over and over as Mike experiments with different textures and instruments. It’s kind of like Swans but if all its members converged into sentience as a music teacher in 1970. There’s a bit where each instrument is announced before it comes into play, and I can’t tell if its brilliant or fucking corny as fuck. Either way, its genius.

Carcass ‎– Necroticism – Descanting The Insalubrious (1991)
death metal

Carcass ‎– Necroticism – Descanting The Insalubrious (1991)

Necroticism is a weird one. It has a strange feeling for me, that despite being a death metal record with plenty of pacy moments or even blasts, the whole thing just feels like it’s trundling along at a snails pace. I’m not sure exactly what it is that causes it to feel like this, but it is what it is. Traditionally, my listening of this band would end here, as the group transitioned away from the gory sickness of earlier albums into a cleaner and more melodic death metal sound. Necroticism is the perfect balance of both of these worlds, and despite the previously mentioned pacing issues, is a solid and now timeless underground metal record. Tracks like “Incarnate Solvent Abuse” put Carcass up there with the all-time metal greats.

Merzbow – Pulse Demon (1996)
noise & power electronics

Merzbow – Pulse Demon (1996)

Ah, Pulse Demon. There aren’t many stand out individual noise records. Bands, sure, but individual records? There aren’t that many. Pulse Demon is probably one of the most instantly recognisable, but is it one of the better offerings from Merzbow? And why is it so popular? Well, for starters, its got everything from the Merzbow project. It captures – from the prime era – all of the project’s great attributes. It’s not as intensely incinerating as some of his works, but its a great starting point if nothing else.

Rick Fox – The Pirates Of Dark Water (Genesis) OST (1994)
electronic

Rick Fox – The Pirates Of Dark Water (Genesis) OST (1994)

This is one of my all time favourite Genesis / Megadrive soundtracks. I found the game impossibly hard as a child (I don’t think I ever completed it), but its soundtrack will stick with me until the end of time. It is upbeat and jaunty, and other times slow, melancholic and pensive. It is often simplistic, yet other times unfolds into glorious chiptune pomp. Really, this has it all, and its a long one, too. It’s absolutely beautiful in every single way and I love it so much. My favourite series of tracks are the Citadel themes, but there are so many good compositions here. Timeless.

Clipping. – There Exists An Addiction To Blood (2019)
hip hop

Clipping. – There Exists An Addiction To Blood (2019)

I’ve been meaning to check out Clipping. for a serious amount of time now. I finally got to listen to …Addiction To Blood in the dying months of 2020, and I soon grew to learn what all the fuss is about. The first thing to notice is there is no immediate urgency with this record. The songs creep slow, building all sorts of menacing atmospheres. On the first run through, a lot of the tracks blur into one due to their minimalist nature, but it is on the second listen that this record truly reveals itself. My God, what an unsettling array of compositions, with the backing tracks ranging from absolutely nothing to sinister beats or even harsh noise courtesy of a couple of different artists, most notably for me, being The Rita. That’s cool as hell that they featured real underground noise artists to do some of their shit. The rhymes and flows are also just second to none, honestly. What guest spots there are, are also of equal quality. Truly, this is a fantastic hip hop record (can we even call it that? I suppose so) and one I really, really regret not checking out sooner. I look forward to checking out more from these guys.

Cradle Of Filth – Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa (2010)
metal

Cradle Of Filth – Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa (2010)

Darkly Darkly is a hideously-titled later effort from Cradle Of Filth, in what I refer to as the post-Thornography lull of disinteresting releases (Devil’s Thunder aside). Darkly is just that – dark, almost artificially so. Cradle’s sense of mystery and evil is something that permeates most of it’s musical output over the years, however here on Darkly Darkly the atmosphere seems forced and cheesy, and a little crap, to be honest. Musically, the band are tight and proficiently sound. There are no complaints here. Its just as a whole, this record is a big miss, for me at least.

Mephistofeles – Satan Sex Ceremonies (2020)
doom metal

Mephistofeles – Satan Sex Ceremonies (2020)

There has been a lot of hype around this band as of late. Vinyl prices for Satan Sex Ceremonies (and I’m sure, other releases from them) are nothing short of extortionate. Perhaps then, I went into this album with too much of an expectation. The art too, conjurs up an unique sense of sleaze and evil, of which the sound does not match. Mephistofeles play laid back stoner rock in the vein of Electric Wizard et al. Muddy analogue sounds driven by washed out vocal performances and sleazy riffs, like the soundtrack to the big fight at the end of a sexploitation movie. All of this is well and truly up my street. Why then, do I feel an emptiness or even a boredom whilst listening to this? One must attribute such to the previously mentioned hype that this record recieved. This reminded me why I got bored of the doom metal circlejerk in the first place. I will happily give Mephistofeles another chance, but I am dissapointed by this album, that I cannot deny.