Oh no Animal Collective oh my God what have you done

Jesus Christ in heaven this is some impossibly horrible album art. Good God I can't even believe a human being created this and put it on the cover of something. I can sort of believe that Animal Collective would approve it since they seem like the kind of people who would be like "this is horrible which is why I like it," but that doesn't excuse whoever made this thing. Nothing can excuse that person. That person poured acid in a child's eyes, from a beaker, so you know that they didn't just trip while holding a box of acid. You know it wasn't an accident, that which caused that little girl's tortured shrieks. They wanted that child's eyes to melt and seep down her chubby little cheeks in puddles of searing ocular fluid and they should go to jail.

I guess that's the long and short of it, is that whoever drew this should go to jail. Maybe not for a very long time, maybe even just a low-security prison. I'm not even saying this should be taken off the stands because your right as an American is to make any stupid and horrible thing you want to as long as it doesn't cause any direct harm to a person. Although even that is debatable because I might have to kill myself after acknowledging that this is an image that could belong on a CD cover. Is that murder? It should be considered murder. Forget what I said before, I'm going to kill myself and the person who made this is responsible and they should be put on death row. Lethal injection. You made the cover for Centipede Hz and you need to die for it. It is the only correct action available to us, in this world that was previously painted in shades of grey. No longer. Centipede Hz is wrong and its creator should be punished under a just society.

I can't even get over this a little bit. Do you ever look at Something Awful's Photoshop Phriday? This is what a Goon would make if the subject was, like, "Deakin is insanely cranky about being left off of Merriweather Post Pavilion and takes his awful revenge." Did Deakin do this? That would make sense, he always seemed like he might do something like this. I mean, I think we all knew this was a possibility, that an indie group would come up with sleeve art that would make even the most egregious Pog blush with discomfort, the same way the men who worked on the Manhattan Project were aware of what an atom bomb would do to a human body, but nobody...nobody could have prepared themselves for this. This is what it must be like to have your arm torn off on a roller coaster. Deep in the back of your mind you always knew that there was the vaguest chance that it could happen, but the pain is as sudden as it is unbearable and in an instant all probabilities disintegrate and reform as moaning ghosts to weave the fabric of horror that your life has turned into and "vaguest chance" becomes "inescapable nightmare." The cover of Centipede Hz is an inescapable nightmare, is the point I'm trying to get across.

You know how sometimes you'll be talking to someone at work that you thought was an alright guy, and then he says something like "I think reverse-racism is the real problem in America today" and you just suddenly want him to lose his job? Not even that so much but to take his job from him, somehow? I want Animal Collective's careers after seeing this album art. I want their children to go hungry, I want the heads of their fathers hung low in shame. I want a formal apology: "We, the men of Animal Collective, apologize for making you look at this for even a second. We had the power to make sure not a lot of people looked at this and we did the opposite by making you look at it, and we can never undo the damage caused by that decision, but we can offer our most sincere condolences for the mental trauma that acknowledging the reality of the cover of Centipede Hz has undoubtedly caused you."

In conclusion, this is the worst image imaginable and I am a worse person for having looked at it, as are you all. Fuck you, Animal Collective. Fuck you for what you have turned us into.

-CJ


(when not humorously overblowing the mental consequences of terrible album art, I also write the webcomic Boys and Girls in America)

"No Homo" Epilogue: Action Bronson is a Cockwad of Ungainly Proportions

This is a pretty straightforward story:  Queens rapper and much touted next-big-thing Action Bronson was caught being a complete shithead to a drunk transgendered woman a couple of days ago, and when he posted a gloating picture of the occurrence on Instagram the Go Fuck Yourself was so overwhelming that he was forced to delete his account. Like all big stupid babies who decide to NOT TAKE IT ANYMORE in as ineffectual a manner as possible, he took his pissy tirade to Twitter, alternating between insulting his followers for being so sensitive and inquiring as to the status and location of his post-naptime juice box.

This is pretty much always the way it goes: it's always the loudest, most "outrageous" speakers who are the first to shit when you tell them to quit being such an asshole. It's a pussified, PC society until suddenly you're the one getting picked on, and then before you know it the Whaaaaaaaaambulance is barreling down the boulevard, racing to the aid of a man whose feelings you hurt by pointing out what an absolute dick he was acting like. Can't anyone see that the people who stand up against bullies are the real bullies here?!?

If anyone thought the things I brought up in that essay weren't still a problem in this day and age? They're still a big fucking problem in this day and age. He'll doubtless have learned nothing from the whole thing and it's unlikely to do any damage to his career, but a few more people have seen the true colors of a fresh critical darling who could previously do no wrong, and maybe a few more people will really start to think about how fucked the rap community's stance towards LGBTQ people is.

-CJ

New Music From Zac Bentz!

Sorry I haven't been around too much these last few months, folks; work and other writing obligations totally got in the way of my amateurish list-making and petty ramblings, along with the fact that more or less nothing in 2011 is really interesting me so far. I'll have a pretty neat essay for you to read up soon, I promise.

Meanwhile, check out some new music from quintessential Styrofoam Boots darling Zac Bentz. One is a 40 minute remix of a Zoe Keating song(and frankly I can't think of two artists that would go together better than Zoe Keating and Zac Bentz) and the other is an ambient/drone reinterpretation of five songs from Portal 2. We love this guy over here at SB and these two new releases are completely free, so check them both out and give a relatively unknown but sure-to-be-rising talent some love.

-CJ

Free Stuff: Enslaved-The Sleeping Gods EP

Here's a nice surprise: Scion is distributing Enslaved's latest EP, The Sleeping Gods, for free! Trve Kvltists will have hot, messy tears defiling their corpsepaint makeup at the idea of one of black metal's most revered acts releasing an album through a major corporation, while non-idiots will get to enjoy 29 minutes of black metal meeting Krautrock (with just a taste of new wave if you listen hard enough) at absolutely no cost. Frankly, this is some of the best stuff I've heard from this band and you'd be a fool to miss out if you have even the slightest interest in black metal, or progressive metal in general. Enjoy!

(People have been reporting problems downloading the album from Scion's site, but you can also get it here with very little fuss)

-CJ

Bandcamp Roundup: Cheap/Free Doom Metal

With the recent releases of Indian's Guiltless and Witch Mountain's South of Salem I thought this would be a good time to give you the scoop on some of the free doom(or at least, doom-y) metal I've been downloading from Bandcamp. As you may know, Bandcamp is an incredible resource for wasting time and a surprising amount of unsigned bands that use the site are very talented. So without further ado, here's a list of doom bands/albums that you can scoop up with no damage to either your wallet or your conscience.

Dirty Knobs-Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell

Would you consider yourself a fan of avant-garde music? Maybe one who enjoys music that's somewhat intense, a bit off the beaten path? Well check this shit out, dude: Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell is Sunn O))) meets Arnold Schonberg meets My Bloody Valentine meets Skinny Puppy meets Nurse With Wound in an instrumental wall of sound that's as psychedelic and horrifying as it is beautiful. And how long is it, might you ask?

Eight hours.

This is men-from-the-boys material, folks, and if you think you're up to it the baseline price is only one dollar. Grab your nuts and pony up a buck for one of the most singular musical experiences you'll ever hear. It's a more-than-fair cost to hear evolution in the making.

Download Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell here.

Arms of Ra-Arms of Ra

Now this is the kind of thing I was really looking for when I first set out on my doomquest. Arms of Ra have made an E.P. that's as intense as it is sonically interesting, mixing the fury and at times even the technical elements of the Dilinger Escape Plan with the bold, sweeping riffs of early Isis. The guitarwork is as sharp as a knife and the rhythm section, though layered, slow and sludgy, betray a captivating complexity upon multiple listenings. Arms of Ra is a promising young band with the potential to uproot most of their contemporaries with the threat of a full length release. Most excellent.

Download Arms of Ra here.

KOLOSS-END OF THE CHAYOT

END OF THE CHAYOT (and yes, the album and band name is in all-caps) makes a pretty compelling case for why some people don't like post-metal. If you've heard a Neurosis album, or even a Mouth of the Architect album, you've heard more captivating versions of the songs KOLOSS attempts to carbon-copy. Some vaguely interesting guitar work can't make up for the fact that this band adds nothing to a scene that in many ways is rightfully accused of borrowing too much from itself. Weak.

Download END OF THE CHAYOT here.

Wizard Eye-Orbital Rites

Wizard Eye makes the exact type of music you'd expect a band called Wizard Eye to make, by which I mean it's extremely goofy and pretty kickass. The vocals sound way too close to Phil Ansemlo for comfort and in truth there's not much here you haven't heard before if you have even a casual relationship with stoner doom, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't fuckin' kick on several occasions and that it wasn't a pretty fun listen. Don't expect to have your mind blown and you might come out the end of this album having had a pretty swell time.

Download Orbital Rites here.

Cleansing the Damned-Cleansing the Damned

A little bit industrial, a little bit doom and a lot okay, Cleansing the Damned is an album that often comes out a bit cornier than it does despairing or scary. The growled vocals have absolutely no heft and the lyrics aren't so much tortured as they are wimpy. The best parts of this release are the total left turns, like the song "Stimuli", which is more or less a spoken-word piece set over a gnarly riff and a drum loop, and the closing, eleven minute instrumental. The mechanical parts work better than the death parts, and I think if this guy (as this is a one-man operation) focuses more on his industrial stuff his future releases will turn out a lot better. He's a good technician but can't pull off the emotional highs needed to drag us into his world.

Download Cleansing the Damned here.

Tempest-Passages

Agalloch is listed on Wikipedia as being "doom", and while I find that patently absurd I guess that if Agalloch can be considered to have doom elements Tempest can too. Passages is an intriguing mix of black metal vocals and huge, swirling riffs that come roaring out the gates with refreshing intensity. This is a band that was born to make a 15-minute opus, but the crust punk trappings on some of the songs, while great for energy, hold Tempest back from being the epic endeavor they should be. For a debut E.P., though? Pretty frickin' great.

Download Passages here.

Are you an artist who uses Bandcamp? Do you release your stuff for cheap, free or Name Your Price? No matter the genre, send me an email and I'll do my best to give you a review worthy of the time you spent making and distributing your work for little cost. If you're a Bandcamp artist who'd like to see your music reviewed on Styrofoam Boots, hit me up at chrismichaeljones@gmail.com and I'll give your stuff a listen.

-CJ

Free Stuff: Metalswim Comp

This is rad, and I've been meaning to bring it up for a while: Adult Swim has come out with a free comp package of rare or upcoming tracks by awesome metal bands. And I do mean awesome: Skeletonwitch(!), Isis(!!), Kylesa(!!!) and Boris(!!!!!!!!!) all have tracks featured on this collection and they're all pretty damn great. I personally even found a few bands I hadn't known about before, like Red Fang and Witch Mountain. There's basically no reason not to download this if you're even slightly into modern metal.

Enjoy.

Really Weird French Techno Songs

One of the weirdest/funniest/oddest things has been going on at Canadian punk band Fucked Up's excellent, and usually well thought out, blog Looking For Gold. A few months ago they started using a tool to find out how people got to their page and where from, a rather common internet convention, and all was fine until someone from Stockton, Califonia got to their page by google searching I'm Looking For This Really Weird French Techno Song That Just Came Out. alright. And then 20 minuets later someone from Australia got to the page by searching the exact same thing. And then someone from upstate New York....... it got to ridiculous. This sparked a really long, excessively angry, clever, bizarre, quite meta post by the band, ("THATS NOT HOW YOU USE GOOGLE. IT'S NOT A PERSON YOU IDIOT.") I suggest you read it here..... and then that sparked a (possibly fake) band hastily forming who called themselves, you guessed it, I'm Looking For This Really Weird French Techno Song That Just Came Out, who, just for the fuck of it, started getting gigs DJing at Fucked Up shows.

And since then its been quite a circus of strange searches ending up at Looking For Gold. This includes Google inquires like "Cool Looking Websites", "Is There Any Screamo Songs Put Onto Flute Sheet Music?", and most recently "What Order Of Countries Makes The Most Sense While Touring Europe." It all has noting to do with music, and the band realizes this and seems pretty pissed off/utterly baffled by that fact, but it has to be the funniest thing that has ever happened to a contemporary Canadian kind of experimental punk band.

Needed: A Good Spot For Free Streaming Music

I don't know if you've heard of lala.com, but if you haven't it doesn't make much sense to check it out now, since it's shutting down in a month. If you have heard of it, and especially if you've used it in the past, you might be finding yourself a little bit pissed off. First imeem gets folded into Myspace Music and decides to dick up their audio quality, and now Lala falls down completely? Bunk.

This concerns me. Imeem was a great service for introducing people to music, and to test out music to see if you liked it. Lala was slightly inferior, but still serviceable. The only thing that comes close to either at this point is playlist.com, and I'm worried it's going to get the axe or get swallowed into a bigger company, as well. Why wouldn't it, at this rate?

So I'm just throwing the question out there: Does anyone know of a good audio service that lets the user listen to music at their leisure without paying, isn't a radio website and isn't Youtube? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

-CJ

Rolling Stone's "100 Best Albums Of The Decade" is the most horrible shit in the world

There have been some bad, bad, bad lists about what was the best of this decade, but this one takes the fucking cake.

Jesus.

I think "gutless" is the first word that comes to mind. And then "predictable". And then "wrong". I'm not going to tell you what's bad about it specifically, because I don't want to ruin our own list, but also because I don't really have to tell you why this list sucks, because you have a fucking brain.

If our own Top 100 list turns out to be as lame as this bullshit you have my permission to come into our homes and take our things.

-CJ

A Post-Thanksgiving Message

Hey dudes. Thanksgiving just ended a couple hours ago where I am, and you all have probably had your fill of turkey and 'taters and cranberry sauce and all that great shit. I did too. Nothing embarrassingly terrible happened this year, the food was good...I count that as a win, as I'm sure many of you would as well.

Well, someone who wasn't able to chow down on fowl, grease and butter this year was one Ronnie James Dio. He wasn't because he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Say it with me: Yikes.

As many of you may well know, I am not in the slightest a fan of the man's music(Dehumanizer was a good album and Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow is tolerable in small doses). That said, Dio strikes me as one of the nicest people in metal and I hear nothing but overwhelmingly positive things about him as a human being. And even if I hadn't, nobody should have their insides exploding on them the same day they're supposed to be honkin' down a big slice of bird. Stomach cancer on Thanksgiving? Luck is a lady, but that doesn't stop her from being a royal cunt.

That said: It's important to remember that terrible shit hits "regular" people just as hard as it does celebrities, and fifty times more often. It's completely terrible that anyone should have to deal with this kind of thing during the time they're supposed to be living large off of cheap booze, poultry and familial hate. And while Dio has the resources to work through even a cosmic bitch-slap as big as stomach cancer, lots of people don't, and they're the ones you're not hearing about.

So while you're still working the weight off, let's have a "get well soon" for Ronnie James Dio and his family, but while you're at it, send a couple to the people you don't know, and three to the people you wouldn't care to know even if you did. Life is quick and shitty enough without this kind of thing sneaking up on folks, and definitely too much so for pettyness.

Let's all remember to watch each other's backs this holiday season, eh?

-CJ

The Importance of Being Metal: Prelude

A few days ago, I was tooling around on the internet when I happened upon metalrules.com's list of the Top 100 Heavy Metal Albums. Needless to say when it comes to any musical countdown list, it's wrong, and what's more, it betrays the same sort of favoritism that Rolling Stone does with lists like these. Just switch "Metallica" with "The Beatles" and "Iron Maiden" with "Bob Dylan" and you're pretty much adhering to the same principals.

Still, as is often true with Top lists, it does work as something of a primer, more of a "100 Important Heavy Metal Albums" than "The Best In This Order". And it did get me thinking: If somebody were to stumble upon this list and take it's advice, how effective would it be in segueing them into metal as a genre?

So hey: Guess what this new column is going to be about!

Now, I haven't heard all 100 albums, and I don't have the time or money needed to do so. I have heard about 30 of them in their entirety, though, and these are the ones I'm going to be looking at and analyzing. There are three questions I'm going to be asking for each one:

1. Is it good?
2. Is it "important"?
3. Is it a good entry place for a beginner?

But before I get to that, there are several bands that I feel I need to warn the uninitiated listener to stay away from. Most of their list is solid, but there are some real clunkers on here also. So in the same way you can safely discard anything by Fall Out Boy on a list of greatest albums of the 21st Century, here are the bands and albums to stay away from, lest they ward you off of the genre forever:

• Dio: Any album that has Dio's inovolvement(save for Dehumanizer by Black Sabbath, which doesn't actually make an appearance anywhere on this list) is utter poison. He's like a bizarro Iron Maiden, in that instead of taking unpalatable concepts and making them awesome, he makes you feel like that much more of a greasy loser for having heard his music. He practically bleeds Lame. Stay away from the two Black Sabbath albums he recorded in the early '80s: Heaven and Hell and The Mob Rules. And if any metalhead ever recommends Dio to you(and they will), make sure to slap them squarely in the penis.
  
• Motley Crue: Once again with the other-band analogies, they're sort of like a parallel-version of Guns 'n Roses, in that instead of being the kind of trashy guys that pee off the roof, punch cops and basically make kickass parties, they're the sort of dudes who'll fuck the drunk girl on the couch when she's passed out. And then puke on her.
• W.A.S.P: Imagine if Motley Crue took themselves seriously. Yeah.
  
• Helloween: Wanna hear where power metal bands like Dragonforce and Stratovarius got their inspiration? No, I wouldn't want to, either.
  
• Def Leppard: Besides having one of the worst names in music history, they also brought hair metal into the mainstream, and we had to wait until bands like Anthrax and Slayer came along until any "real" metal from America started popping up again with any significant impact. Is this getting through? They came this close to killing the genre. That takes a lot of money and a lot of really lowest common denominator bullshit to accomplish.
  
• Iced Earth: Think Iron Maiden without the vocal prowess, the charm, or the songwriting ability. That small "pop" you just heard came from your ribcage.
  
• Overkill: There's not even anything about them that I can really make fun of. They're just dull. And any band that limits my ability to throw zingers can go fuck themselves.
• Manowar: I'm not trying to be offensive here, but listening to Manowar is scientifically proven to turn you retarded.

Now that that's out of the way, we can get to legitimate analysis of their album choices. I'll be going backwards from the bottom of their list, until I make it to the number one choice, Master of Puppets.

My goal is to give you a solid listening foundation for heavy metal by the time I'm done with this. So...yeah.

Let's fuckin' go.

-CJ

Hang You From the Heavens

Jack White believes in three. Three main parts in the Stripes, Guitar, Bass, and Vocals, three colors he reps, three chords in the classic punk and delta blues that he based his style off of, three lines per stanza in the 12 bar blues, the list goes on and on. He went as far as to name his record label Third Man Records and he sometimes takes to calling himself Jack White III. 

So should it be any surprise that two bands was not enough?

The Dead Weather released their first single, Hang You From the Heavens, on seven inch vinyl and digital download today. The band is made up of Allison Mosshart of The Kills on vocals, Little Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs on bass, Dean Fertita from Queens of the Stone Age on fuzzed out guitar, and Jack White on, get this, drums. So that leaves the man with one band on vocals and guitar, one band on bass, and the lucky number three on drums. 

Now I know you can't judge Mr. Whites endeavors based on the first single. Steady As She Goes was intriguing until it fell flat behind a dud of a record. Icky Thump as well kicked total ass but the album with the same name came off as hit or miss. Still, I have high hopes for Horehound, cumming out this June. Because, well, the single absolutely owns. And even though Jack White is the big name around it was actually Mosshart and Fertita who composed the song, which could suggest a much more collective nature to the whole thing. 

I'll be keeping an eye out for it but in the mean time I'll have this to hold me over: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlCFZCmbORg

and sell you off to the devel

Kick Out The Jams

I am not buying any records for the next two weeks. Instead I am going to take all my record-buying money and put it in a little stack until April 16 when the second In dependant Record Store Day hits. Last year's was kind of a bust (though Jello Biafra did man the counter at Amoeba SF for an hour or two) but this year looks like its gonna be pretty sweet. I don't want to list all the incredible releases, just check out the site. Also live performances and sales pretty much everywhere. Go crazy.

"Buy real records in real shops, or I'll come round your house and scream at your mother.” -Ian Gillian