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Witchfinder General’s - Death Penalty is, to me, the perfect post-Sabbath Doom/NWOBHM/rock lp. I doubt it’s any great revelation to most of you to hear this album praised, but if it is, I suggest you check it out immediately. Every song is a lean and streamlined power hit. With detuned, massive riffs, a GREAT drum sound (especially for ‘82), awesome musicianship all around, and soulful clear vocals. Lyrics are basically about one of two things:

1. Sex, Drugs (& Beer), Rock N Roll
2. Hunting witches in Medieval times

The combination of the powerful riffs and the hooks from the sung vocals is matched by few in their time - Maiden, Diamond Head (early), Angel Witch - but WFG have a much more pronounced Ozzy-era Sabbath influence mixed in with the classic NWOBHM sound. After a brief acoustic intro on Invisible Hate, the album opens up with a riff steeped in Iommi and Page’s style, a perfect balance of simplicity and flashiness. It’s got a feel good peace and love message, and ends with some pro-Beer statements before leading into the speed rock of Free Country, which extols the virtues of pretty much every drug except heroin (which it advises you steer clear of). If parents were pissed by Sweet Leaf and Snow Blind, they must have been mortified by this album. Of course if your mom ever saw the cover to this, which has a possible witch (topless), being killed by a priest and Witch Finders, she’d probably flip out on you. I mean maybe your mom wouldn’t care, but if she didn’t you probably wouldn’t be listening to music designed to piss off parents anyway.

My favorite jam on this one though is without a doubt the song named after the band, Witchfinder General. The opening riff is so dominating you have no choice but to give your full attention, much like the personality of the character found within it. The clear and well sung vocals are almost a little off-putting if you’re a stranger to the band’s sound, but they gel well and anyone who doesn’t mind a little singing will enjoy them for sure. The song actually details the troubles between the populace of a town and the local witch finder, changing voices in different sections, which is kind of cool I guess. In the end the Witchfinder General wins. The song probably has some parallels with modern authority figures but I really doubt a band that sang the line “Mushroom tea, a toke of weed/Amphetamine is real good speed” really thought it through that much.

This comes on Black, Clear, Red, and Blue. I’m not sure how many of each were made but 500+ would be a safe bet. I’m showing the vinyl instead of the sleeve because it’s not really SFW.

Warzone Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget the Streets
War Zone was one of the first hardcore bands I was ever aware of as a youth. Of course this was the 90’s so my introduction to them was their Victory years, but even a rerecorded version of Lower East Side Crew still has great songs, despite not being the genuine article. The first time I heard “Escape Your Society” from the Revelation comp, I never wanted to play a guitar solo so bad. The first one comes in just a few seconds after the start of the song with an absolute vengeance. It’s so short but it’s beyond perfect. I’m sure there’s a theoretical music college reason for that, but I don’t know it. It just sounds like all the right notes get hit. With the exception of one or two Dr. Know runs on the first Bad Brains album, it’s my favorite solo in a hardcore song. I studied that thing. Other than the rather loud ride cymbal throughout, I consider it a perfect hardcore song and my favorite War Zone track.

But Escape Your Society wouldn’t be half of what it is if it wasn’t for the Raybeez. “I can’t take it no more… I’m buggin out!”. The song rushes forward hereafter with Ray ranting from the perspective of a reformed drug addict whos had a few too many bad trips, rasping and growling all over the beat of the song. His vocals almost have an additional percussive element because, while they never go off-time, they shift and break against the tempo the same way the firey solos do.

The power of this song, and the classic As One (which it’s paired with), of course set the stage for War Zone’s first lp “Don’t Forget the Struggle, Don’t Forget The Streets”, originally self released by the band on Fist Records(you can tell the first pressing by the original hand written lettering on the back). I’ve mentioned before that Agnostic Front’s first lp is the ultimate summary of Hardcore music, and I stand by that, but I think DFTS occupies a similar, if somewhat different space in the NYHC lexicon in that it’s probably the most effective combination of all of the disparate elements of late 80’s New York City hardcore in one package. Street cred - check. Straight Edge - check. Skinheads - check. Metal licks - check. I suppose it doesn’t account for any sort of peace punk sentiment, but there is an underlying lack of trust in the government to their overt patriotism (I guess that’s libertarian in spirit). Regardless, War Zone manage to combine a lot of stuff that shouldn’t really go together here, and I think you have to give a lot of the credit for that to Raybeez, who was, by all accounts a man of the people. There’s something to be said for a guy who gets along with, and is well liked by, sketchy guidos from Long Island, Straight Edge suburban youths, and the archetypal skinhead.

 R.I.P. Ray Barbieri.
 (drumming in AF circa ‘83)

Still pretty ‘tied down’ today but I’m taking a small break here to make note of one of my favorite full-tilt “D-Beat” albums - DISGUST “Brutality Of War” lp. I know it’s on the very un-punk label Earache, who subsequently put them on tour with Morbid Angel, but the deal is basically that Dave Ellesmere (you might know him as Bambi on Discharge’s “WHY”) decided to throw his hat in the ring with an old style Dis-clone band, in part because he was so ashamed of the path Discharge had taken in their later years (after his departure). Who better to hire as the singer than Dean Jones of Extreme Noise Terror? I mean cred-wise they may not be at the top of the heap, but sonically I’ll hold this up with any of the big boys of the era. I mean it basically sounds like Extreme Noise Terror circa Phonophobia, maybe digging into the beat a little more but it beats the hell out of anything they managed thereafter (not saying much I guess but whatever). You won’t find an moment of innovation, but a track like Mother Earth is just perfectly constructed single minded War Punk. Almost every song goes VS/CH/VS/CH/solo/VS/CH, it couldn’t be more deliberately one dimensional but I think that’s part of what makes it. You take it as one whole, not individual songs.

BTW- this has been out of print since it came out basically and I doubt Earache cares to repress it. You can find the CD all over amazon and ebay for like $1-2, but the vinyl doesn’t pop up all that much.

…and now for a quick “conflict of interest”.

I’m sure Analog Mike has a few of these on some dusty shelf but for the rest of us who weren’t scoping record shops in Tokyo in ‘01 it’s kinda hard to come by. I was going to do a real post today and again got side tracked. Sorry about how erratic things have been dudes, don’t worry I’ll get my groove back. Plenty of other good Japanese shirts from this seller too.Not a lot to say about this other than let the best dawg win… love this shirt:

Metal Monday vol. 32: Metallica No Life Til Leather

There’s a new Metallica lp out this week. After sampling it, I’ve determined it sounds like Megadeth in their commercial heyday (’92-’95). Progressive pseudo thrash for the elderly and stupid. I mean at least they’re trying to be edgy again, but how edgy can these codgers really be at this point? You think Hammet even remembers doing session guitar on Septic Death songs? I don’t believe the line about this shit not being constructed in pro-tools either. Let’s face it these dudes haven’t pieced a song together before entering a studio with the tape rolling, since 2 decades ago.

Ah, their heyday though, what a triumph; and with the humblest of beginnings, covering unknown British bands at club shows in Nor Cal. When they had finally scraped together some tunes, the virtually unrecognizable early ‘Tallica lineup of Hetfield, Ulrich, Mustaine (lead guitar), and McGovney (bass) laid down the relatively legendary “No Life Til Leather” cassette. Basically NLTL is a mini album of NWOBHM emulation done as close to the real thing as possible, right down to Hetfield doing his best to imitate Sean Harris of Diamond Head’s sung vocal style. The vocal attack is endearingly shitty, almost as much so as Ulrich’s drumming, which we all know has improved marginally since this release, but only just. Actually, I’m sorry to say the only one with any kind of mastery of his role in the band seems to be, future Megadeth man Mustaine. At least his notorious attitude was justified. His guitar’s louder in the mix too. Can’t say I’m surprised.

No Life Til Leather doesn’t really mean much now as anything besides a footnote in a career, but it’s still way cooler to hear teenage Hetfield warble his way through Motorbreath than have to listen to most of this nu-autotuned-”heyyy-yeaaa” shit from this decade. You should know that anyway but w/e.

So what’s the story about Dave Mustaine and his dogs?

Well well… a “Portland Edition” of Poision Idea - “Kings Of Punk” on Pusmort.  The auction says it’s #’d out of 100, but after referring to Cooch, Boston’s #1 Poison Idea collector, he says there is no numbering on them, and the number made is uncertain. Nonetheless this is the version of the album you want to own if you are into records and good rock music.

Kings Of Punk is the first of numerous great Poison Idea albums (”Record Collectors…” should be counted as an E.P.), and I milestone in the most impressive winning streak in American punk and hardcore. Minus live lps, and a couple of less interesting singles, basically everything this band did from their inception, right up to longtime guitarist Pig Champion’s death, is indispensable. This is one of their more important releases, in part because it’s the first record to have a more pronounced Rock N Roll influence, with Pig Champions incredible soloing abilities really taking shape before your eyes. The songs still have a lot of similarities to the ones of their first EP, but are now beefed up with a modern guitar sound, plenty of digital reverb and echo, and an overall clean sheen. Rock N Roll, big studio sounds, and 3rd records are the things that kill most good hardcore bands or at the very least drive them to the depths of banality. To use a cliche’ though Poison Idea are not most hardcore bands. Their song craft continued to take shape here and songs like Ugly American, which stretches 3 minutes and has a bit of a midpaced build-up are really PI coming out of their shell and stretching out for the first time. There are multisectioned compositions, and more repeated choruses, but still enough of the initial brutality of their early days to make this the bridge to their late 80’s era.

I think a pretty convincing argument can be made for Nightmare’s “Give Notice Of Nightmare” being the best “Burning Spirits” style Japanese hardcore release. A lot of people are surely gonna kick their feet and say “what about Bastard”, “what about Deathside”, “what about Poison”, and I mean, you could make a good argument for any of those, and many more really. But I think, especially if this isn’t a style you know much about, Give Notice Of Nightmare is a great entry point. For one, it’s just long enough, 10 songs. Each one built on the perfect mix of Discharge, Motorhead, & Iron Maiden, balancing brutality, melody, economy, and swagger perfectly.  Each song has a big chorus, a couple of humable riffs, some great call response moments, and skull crushing production, in fact it kind of works kind of like a Japanese Victim In Pain, as a good overall genre summation of Japanese hardcore.

Unfortunately I haven’t got much time at work this week, and still haven’t set up the Internet at home, so this one’s brief, hopefully I can return to it next time this one’s on ebay. I know there’s plenty of people who love this one that read this blog, so please sound off. It deserves more than a paragraph.

Amebix - Who’s The Enemy? (Spiderleg)
Who the hell thought of The Amebix? Was it their singer (who has the greatest punk name ever) THE BARON? To me this band makes absolutely no sense. Basically some dudes living in abandoned buildings were into Joy Division, Killing Joke, and Discharge and somehow mixed those together. I don’t understand it. Later they sort of started combining some metal in the mix, and the whole enterprise isn’t so confusing, but I threw on the new Alt Tentacles “Spiderleg collection this weekend while setting up the new crib, and it just hit me, this is one of the weirdest bands ever. 

Listening to early Amebix offerings it’s clear that they’re really into atmosphere and rhythm which are defining characteristics of all of the aforementioned bands. On Who’s The Enemy, opener “Carnage” is pretty much a mash-up of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls” and Killing Joke’s “War Dance”. The bass guitar and tribal drumming leads the charge, while the heavily treated guitars are used more to provide texture than carve out riffs. The Baron delivers his shouts heavily treated in reverb while phasing synth and guitar lines weave in and out of the mix, filling in the gaps with white noise (not music). Curfew starts with more ambient synth noise and distorted speech before kicking into a full on “Decontrol” style ripper, but with the production style of this record, it emphasizes a really different side of it. Well actually it kind of just sounds like it’s at the end of an airplane hanger. The amount of echo they’re using, on a song at this speed gives it kind of a weird hazy feel with the guitar just washing over everything other than the cymbals. Belief on side B takes things back to the more tribal drum attack, it almost reminds me of Joy Division’s “Glass”, but of course taken to a much noisier extreme. The closer is the signature tune “No Gods No Masters”, which is relatively sparse for being such a well known t-shirt slogan. Most of the time the guitar and bass are just working an E-Chord in various rhythmic patterns, often grating against the circular drumming. Vocal effects start to get more extreme as the song pulses its way to an end and the guitar begins running up and down the frets liberally.

So as I said before I can’t imagine what the thought process was in starting this band, and why you’d think to combine the elements of early hardcore, and early post punk in this way, but I suppose these things weren’t quite as far apart in those days. This is the og pressing w/ a wrap around sleeve on Spiderleg btw.