Deals & Steals: That’s a Lotta Vikings!

  Bit of a Nordic influence this time out (again!), and certainly some good tunes found at good prices. This first lot was found at Second Spin:

Leaves Eyes – Vinland Saga $8.99. Moody conceptual stuff about Leif Eriksson’s travels and exploration.

Soilwork – Stabbing the Drama $8.99. Slowly filling in my back catalogue of these Gothenburgers and In Flames BFFs.

At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul $4.49. Speaking of Gothenburg, there wasn’t an identifiable scene until this album melted everyone’s faces.

Dark Tranquillity – Character $2.49. One of their best.

Destroy Destroy Destroy – Battle Sluts $5.00. Actually an American band. But that title! Sounds like Cradle of Filth meets Manowar. Perfect touring partner for 3iob.

Not Viking but a bit Scottish (and awesome):

Murder Inc. – Locate Subvert Terminate: The Complete Murder Inc. $3.99. So nice to hear a remaster of this marvelous Killing Joke side project with Chris Connelly. Behold, Scot-industrial rap:

And in the super-bargain category, some finds from the local thrift store. Each were only one or two bucks apiece!

Green Day – American Idiot. Overplayed? True. Overplayed because actually very good? Also true.

Promonium Jesters – Time and Place. I once saw these Ontario industrialists open for Hanzel und Gretyl. Their recorded output has a steal-from-the-best quality to it, including some spot-on Skinny Puppy influence.

  Kraftwerk – The Mix. Worth it just to find out I’ve been singing the chorus wrong all these years. Still, fun fun fun!

 

More Tickets from the Past

Hi all. More tickets to show off – of particular interest this time is an old stub from Operation Rock & Roll from 1991. That’s the Toronto show where Rob Halford beaned himself riding out on the Hog during “Hell Bent For Leather” and decided after the show to leave Priest. Teenaged me almost lost his mind!

Deals & Steals: Viking Swords and Mixing Boards

  Hey all, a big backlog of interesting finds from the past couple of months. All prices $US, Shipping about $15  altogether.

3 Inches of Blood – Battlecry Under a Winter Sun $5.59. Old school 3IOB is good times.

Dark Tranquillity – Haven $4.88. I’m trying to like it. Really. The riffs are there, but so is the baritone crooning. At least I didn’t turf it out the window like I did with Projector.

Lair of the Minotaur – Evil Power $4.19. This is currently one of my favourite things; a sludgy, fudgy Melvins-like fuzztone with an Entombed’s worth of aggression. Heavy, heavy shit.

Lonely Island – Turtleneck and Chain $9.99. The perfect thing for chilling and sippin’ on a lite beer.

Landmine Marathon – Sovereign Descent $5.99. Recent changes to the band can’t take away the power of this massive recording.

Imperative Reaction – Minus All $4.49. IR are that rare animal nowadays – traditional electro industrial.

Arch Enemy – Anthems of Rebellion $2.99. Their most ineffectual album to date, but the price was right.

Evanescence – The Open Door $6.99. File under stuff that I know is bad but listen to anyway. So terrible, so in my car all the time. I think it’s because Amy Lee’s voice reminds me of happy times chasing girls in college using Sarah McLachlan as bait.

And lastly, a record that reminds me of a fun concert story:

  Hanzel und Gretyl – Uber Alles $2.00. I have a soft spot for these Fako-Fascisto Funsters. They played my area with Slick Idiot last year (during Oktoberfest, no less) and blew out the sound system in the club about 20 times in a row. The result was terrible, but I’ll never forget mock-dominatrix Vas Kallas turning to Kaiser von Loopy, completely dropping character, and honking in pure Brooklynese: “This is gonna be one of them nights, eh Rob?”

Thank you, Rob and Betty.

Album Review – Dark Tranquillity “We Are the Void” 2010

  Dark Tranquillity’s 2007 release Fiction was very well received, and therefore a hard act to follow. Taking a leaf from the book of their Gothenburg brothers In Flames, DT have  given us more of the same good stuff.  We Are the Void bears much the same relationship to its predecessor as Reroute to Remain does to Clayman, taking the same songwriting ideas and recording techniques and running with them largely unchanged,  serving up slightly shorter and simpler songs delivered at a crisp, professional pace with a strong thematic and tonal unity amongst the tracks.
 
Opening with surgical slasher “Shadow in Our Blood”, followed by pounder “Dream Oblivion”, the Swedish sextet manage to maintain the line of tension throughout the record. Even when operating at differing tempos, the band hold firmly to the thread of our listening attention right up to the droning fade-out of sleepy, Fear-Factory style closer “Iridium”. Alas, current market forces dictate that all releases must have bonus tracks, so we only have a few seconds to appreciate the album’s true ending before we’re hit with a couple of decent B-sides, number and selection depending on your geographic location and/or method of purchase.
 
The inimitable Martin Popoff has pointed out that Master of Puppets is essentially a remake/sequel to Ride the Lighting, and that there’s nothing wrong with that. We Are the Void works the same way, striking no new iron but fixing none of the perfectly unbroken concepts we’ve been enjoying since Fiction. 8 out of 10