Another Purling Hiss record means things are about to get LOUD round these parts!!!!!!
Purling Hiss have been out as a full band laying waste to stages and decimating eardrums for quite some time now and now they return with "Water On Mars" a huge breathtaking onslaught of guitar majesty. The production has tidied up The Hiss' signature blur and revealed a killer band firing on all cylinders here to deliver THEE guitar rock record of the day!
They've married some Dino Jr and Royal Trux and filtered it through Mike Polizze's mystery machine inner workings and just upped the bar for new rock acts. "Water On Mars" also finds Purling Hiss in more introspective mood with mellow out strummers like "She Calms Me Down" but don't worry there's plenty of guitar splatter and noisy hooks to keep the party going. Seriously kids, listen up, Purling Hiss just drew the line in the sand so its time to buck up and start bringing it big. Have yourself a tall drink of "Water On Mars" and kiss your ass goodbye. Mega Recommended.
So it begins… Captured Tracks has teamed with legendary New Zealand label Flying Nun to start a reissue campaign that is a thing of exquisite beauty, namely to re-release the back catalog of Flying Nun which is nothing short of faint inducing exasperation.
Toy Love is ground zero for South island Kiwi choogle pop and their members went on to start some of the era's most important acts like Tall Dwarfs and The Bats and later The Snares, but Toy Love remain the unruly torch bearers of Dunedin's unparalled yet hugely influential sonic fingerprint on modern music. After scoring the "Live At The Gluepit 1980" double dose from Goner Records in late 2012, we are freaking frothing at the mouth over this 2xLP collection of studio material from the one and only Toy Love. Grab this boss collection and strap in for the ride of a lifetime as Toy Love lay out the weirdo Kiwi punk that we can never seem to get enough of.
Deliriously Recommended.
The mighty My Bloody Valentine have returned with their follow up to the legendary "Loveless", this time opting to do everything themselves. The band self-released "MBV", their first album in 22 years, and we can only imagine what a laborious affair the whole thing is....and it sounds fucking killer.
Enough time has passed to grow a legal drinker and we seriously never actually thought we'd ever get another My Bloody Valentine offering but that's why patience is a virtue. And what a fucking follow up indeed! "MBV" starts off where "Loveless" ended, a logical progression if you will, and proceeds to bend and morph and mutate into something strange, grandiose and wholly original yet something that is inherently My Bloody Valentine. Things get progressively more modern and experimental while maintaining the blurred and obscured beauty that lives within My Bloody Valentines' wheelhouse. "MBV" may start its infancy in the early 90's but you can hear the entirety of the 22 years it took to grow into this thoroughly thrilling sublime modern young adult it has become.
No doubt a terrific outing from start to end. We'll catch you all in another 20 years for MBV's next one! Freakishly Recommended.
INCLUDES DOWNLOAD CODE
Two of modern times more exciting psych rock a groups have joined forces and created "White Ring", a groovy double platter of snaky guitars, undulating basslines, whirling drums and full throated 70's rock vocals. Kadavar are bringing the classic 70's long hair hesher rock vibes while Aqua Nebula Oscillator adds the gamma ray schizoid psyche freakouts. Both groups are plying some high energy extremely creative brain melting sonics throughout making for a thrilling listen. "White Ring" finds the bands trading tunes and even teaming up to jam together and they're making some damn fine heavy psyche burners if we do say so ourselves.
Blistering head nodding groove driven psychedelic space rock with some pepperings of instro improv experimentation make "White Ring" a sonic assault from side A to side D, with only 8 tracks across 4 sides you know there's some serious deep wormholes to get lost in.
Toke up and take the journey. Recommended.
Toxic State didn't stop with the punk madness with Crazy Spirit this time around, they also hooked us up with the brand new LP from Hank Wood And The Hammerheads, entitled "Go Home." Blistering noise coated garage punk sprinkled with grime and synth, Hank Wood And The Hammerheads are tilted full boar towards the back catalog of Crypt Records and man oh man if they're close to surpassing some of the garage punk classics.
"Go Home" has some of the spit of the Final Solutions, the drunken high speed chase of the Motards, the three chord budget punk of Supercharger and the angsty back alley fight of the Murder City Devils. Those who like their punk Back From The Grave, scratched up with feedback and menacing as fuck need to introduce yourself to Hank Wood And The Hammerheads now. The band name might seem like a joke, but their combination of Pussy Galore, Action Swingers, New Bomb Turks and Cheater Slicks fuck-you-garage scree will have all sorts of new fans clamoring for this very limited debut lp.
Shit "Go Home" made Gerald Cosloy best of 2012 list, so you don't even have to take our word for it. BUT WE GOTTA SAY THIS MOTHER IS WAY RECOMMENDED.
Punker than punk label Toxic State Records hooked us up with two 12 inch releases by NY ugly punk maniacs Crazy Spirit and both these releases, "Demo" and "Crazy Spirit" have been blowing up the interweb and zine worlds with nothing but the most fanatical praise, not too shabby for a relatively new band that only has a deleted myspace page to its name.
Crazy Spirit fire multiple rounds of hardcore Killed By Death style punk rock straight at your head, aiming for nothing short of annihilation. Terrifying, fast, loud, furious and mean, this is exactly what the kind of punk rock readers of Maximum RnR need in large doses. Kind like the Germs or Rudementary Peni. Certainly like Discharge. And don't forget to mention GG Allin. But all warped by leather jackets, cough syrup, cheap instruments and cases of PBR. Chugging trash drums beats, blown out guitars, banshee style screaming and a muddy production so grimy its beautiful. Throwing anything by Crazy Spirit on your turntable will instantly transport you to the middle of a cirple pit at a house show where you're getting kicked in the face by some angry punks.
This self-titled lp was widely anticipated by those in the know, after "Demos" knocked everyone on their asses. Crazy Spirit's eponymous LP harkens back to the good ol' days of early 80s hardcore and 90s crust punk but with a heavy coating of no-fi garage punk ineptitude that makes it even more DIY than those other posers in spikes. A totally trashy mess of punk rock deviance like you won't hear all year long, Crazy Spirit's "Crazy Spirit" is 14 songs of brutal ugly repeat listens (in a killer screen printed package, natch).
Man this one makes us feel young again.
What punk house is the show at tonight? Cuz we need to go!!!
FUCKING RECOMMENDED!!!!
Punker than punk label Toxic State Records hooked us up with two 12 inch releases by NY ugly punk maniacs Crazy Spirit and both these releases, "Demo" and "Crazy Spirit" have been blowing up the interweb and zine worlds with nothing but the most fanatical praise, not too shabby for a relatively new band that only has a deleted myspace page to its name.
Crazy Spirit fire multiple rounds of hardcore Killed By Death style punk rock straight at your head, aiming for nothing short of annihilation. Terrifying, fast, loud, furious and mean, this is exactly what the kind of punk rock readers of Maximum RnR need in large doses. Kind like the Germs or Rudementary Peni. Certainly like Discharge. And don't forget to mention GG Allin. But all warped by leather jackets, cough syrup, cheap instruments and cases of PBR. Chugging trash drums beats, blown out guitars, banshee style screaming and a muddy production so grimy its beautiful. Throwing anything by Crazy Spirit on your turntable will instantly transport you to the middle of a cirple pit at a house show where you're getting kicked in the face by some crust punks.
"Demos" captures Crazy Spirit at their most unhinged and loosest, trying to wrestle these songs on to tape, a cassette that quickly made people's best of lists and disappeared. Thankfully Toxic State pressed "Demos" on vinyl with awesome screen-printed packaging for the full DIY punk experience. Grab one quick, this one ain't gonna collect dust that's for sure. You haven't had a fix like this since H100s or Vitamin X.
FUCKING RECOMMENDED!!!!!
We, here at the shop, having been keeping close tabs on Matthew Melton for a while now. Sure we're sad that Snake Flower 2 and his more recent project Bare Wires are broken up and long gone, but we're stoked that Mr. Melton's new power-popped glammed-up garage act Warm Soda is bursting onto the scene to break some hearts. We spun the hell out of the "Reaction" 7" in 2012, but now we have a full length to keep us cruising all night long.
"Someone For You" is a platter full of angsty yet sugar high proto punk that'll earworm its way deep inside your brain and never leave. There's plenty of bands mining the power pop classics from Big Star to the Shoes (ie, Gentleman Jesse, Barreracudas, Games, Cozy, etc) as well as many others digging deep into the glorious days of glam from T-Rex through the New York Dolls (see Mickey, Cheap Time, Exploding Hearts and others), but few boil glam, punk and glam done to such a syrupy sweet and yet loud and raw concentrate that'll get you amped up, dancing around and singing at the top of yer lungs all at the same time as Warm Soda does on their debut "Someone For You." You can tell they've been listening to many of those Sing Sing reissues, cuz Warm Soda is aiming for insta-classic power pop status.
Their name is a little bit of a misnomer though, rock n roll this fresh is always a cold refreshing drink to us. WATCH OUT, THIS ONE"S VERY RECOMMENDED.
Having grown up from their hastily chosen moniker, the members of Urinals decided to take a cue from the Maosist quotation "Let 100 flowers bloom and 100 schools of thought contend,” and the group adopted the name 100 Flowers and indeed let 100 different styles comprise the sound of their sole album as traces of their contemporaries (Gang of 4, Mission of Burma, Wire, REM, Flipper, Magazine, etc…) permeate both sides of wax.
Holy Smokes this album is HOT! Hot enough to scorch your ear hairs as the jams enter your auditory canal on the way to melt your brain. R-E-C-O-M-M-E-N-D-E-D
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES
Fuck Yeah! The self-titled Motorhead debut gets the Drastic Plastic remaster treatment.
Motorhead are like the Beatles of heavy metal, they took the essentials of pure unbridled rock 'n roll and crank the volume and the attitude to ear damaging dangerous levels. Lemmy returned to Earth from spaceship Hawkwind, threw back a shot of whisky and fired up thee ol' four string Rickenbacker to re-create rock 'n' roll history on his own terms. Joined by "Fast" Eddie Clarke on guitar and Phil "Philthy Animal" Taylor on drums Motorhead started a whole new era of HEAVY rock 'n' roll that was played at top speed with their now signature "everything louder than everything else" sound. With stone classic cuts like "Motorhead", "Lost Johnny" and "White Line Fever" to name but a few the self titled Motorhead record is the perfect primer to get your blood pumping.
Mega classic from 1977, Motorhead "Motorhead" belongs in every record collection and this high quality remastered, hand numbered edition sounds fucking fantastic so blast your neighbors into submission and up the dosage! Surely Recommended.
All these Lee Hazlewood reissues coming through the shop are filling up our shelves and getting plenty of facetime with our collective turntables and now we get another dose of Hazlewood magic. This is where it all began, his first album, intended to be an album of songs that other more established artists could borrow from turned out to be a fine collection that sounded best when performed by Hazlewood's warm baritone.
These 10 cuts of country tinged AM pop are pure Hazlewood through and through and they are just a glimpse at what was about to become one of the most legendary American songwriters of the 20th century. "Trouble Is A Lonesome Town" is an album of supreme storytelling songs about fictional drifters and down and out characters from walks brought ot life with acoustic guitars, swelling harmonica and Lee Hazlewood's unmistakable soothing baritone croon and subtle humor. Super Recommended.
ORGINALS SELL FOR $60 ON AVERAGE
AVAILABLE AGAIN!!! Brainbombs are a band that gets name dropped more than it’s fair share around here and in these updates. Unfortunately, aside from a few odds and sods and an LP or two, most of our Brainbombs vinyl collections are severely lacking. Luckily, today is the day we and you all can own their third LP from 1995 on vinyl for a reasonable sum without breaking our backs digging through millions of crates only to find that Brainbombs discs just aren’t collecting dust in said crates. Original copies fetch around $60 online and we rarely see a Brainbombs record in trade going back to when we opened. This isn’t an original, but it’s a super nice “remastered vinyl pressing on black vinyl, housed in a VG Kids screenprinted heavy chipboard pocket cover in a resealable Japanese mylar sleeve. Ltd to 500.” It’s been out of print for over a decade and with only 500 of these to go around, it may not be in print for much longer than a week. Highly recommended.
PRESSED ON PINK WAX LIMITED TO 250 COPIES!
We're always searching and digging deep to find mind blowing new bands and labels to fill up the racks here at the shop, and sometimes we strike psych rock gold. Our newest discovery, Spanish Moss, is for sure gonna melt your face off. Patrick Haight, sound engineer guru at Burger Records, signed them to his new label Spot On Sounds, and man are we glad he did. Spanish Moss grabs you by the ears and drags you through a bluesy space-drenched fuzzed-out psychedelic journey on their debut long player, "Kelp"...and once you've gone done the rabbit hole, you'll get stuck flipping this one over and over again.
We love our psych rock loud, raw, stretched out, warped and crazy as it can be and Spanish Moss heavily delivers on all those fronts. Searing delinquent acid fried rock n roll, "Kelp" leans on those ever deep sources of psych inspiration from Hawkwind to Monoshock and definitely owes some debt to the Phoenix and Guerrson back catalogs (quality influences for sure). Spanish Moss can be filed away next to the current crop of psychedelic adventurers like MMOSS, Cave, White Hills, Psychic Ills and Acid Mothers Temple -- if "Kelp" ever leaves your turnable that is. This one comes on translucent pink vinyl and is bound to go quick, so don't miss out. You need some "Kelp" in your life.
RECOMMENDED TIMES INFINITY.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES / UNIQUELY SPRAY PAINTED JACKETS
Another platter of splatter from Spray Paint again teaming up with SS Records to tag yer ears with spunked minimalist punk clamour.
We gobbled up these gent's first couple singles and spun 'em to death at our P-Rex afterhours hedonism expos and now to score a full length is brightening our days to say the least. Spray Paint offers up 11 nameless tracks of short, atonal machine gun alien invasion punk in the spirit of A-Frames, with the guitar mangling and wonked out anit-melodies of The Ex, the goon-y mongoloid-isms of Wounded Lion and the primitive urgency of Wire that fills this album with fried and singed bursts of treble blazers.
Concise, angular and unrelenting, this self-titled LP will surely be making some year-end lists and until then it will be getting lots o' spins on our turntables at top volume. Mega Recommended.
EDITION OF 250 ON MIXED COLOR WAX!!!
Brain Vacation is a four piece punk group from the meat littered streets of Chicago. Their debut LP just dropped on the Wall Of Youth label and it is 10 cuts of melodic punk rock attitude. Buzzing guitars, distorto bass, crashing drums and a vocalist that sounds kinda beardy and can snarl with the best of 'em. This self-titled record yields 2 minute blasts of short, fast & loud with some longer tracks that lurch at a mid tempo pace adding to the menace but these dudes know where to sprinkle in the melody giving their sound a well rounded feel. But track number 9 is titled "8 Minutes" yet its only 6 and half minutes long… so you know this ain't no math rock malarkey.
Slap this platter on your turntable and take a mental check out for few. Recommended.
If we've said it once we've said it a million times - we love Minimal Wave and all that they unearth! Going on for some years now and always piquing our collective interest, label head Veronica Vasicka sure knows how to pick 'em and Sanda Plays Electronics is no exception.
Some nice icy keys, primitive drum clicks and barely audible vocals: what more could we ask for? None more! We are certainly hearing the influence of D.A.F. and Cab Voltaire on this, though more on the atmospheric side of Cab's work and perhaps more in the ethos of D.A.F.'s body music. Early techno heads will also dig this, as it sounds like something Derrik May or Theo Parrish would touch. We always recommended snagging Minimal Wave releases and this is no exception -- highly limited, never-before released material, great packaging. Snag this and get freaky!!
Get ready to be walloped by the latest single from Total Punk, from none other than legendary dirge punk delinquents, ACTION SWINGERS !!! Born in the same garbage crusted alleys of NYC as Chrome Cranks, Pussy Galore and Sonic Youth, Action Swingers slashed and burned rock n roll like no one else in the early 90s. So it's no wonder the folks at Total Punk decided to resurrect two lost songs from the Action Swingers short and mean existence.
Action Swinger's shit storm of noisy garage will fucking blow you away, it's kinda like mixing Royal Trux (lighter fluid) with the Scientists (napalm). Ned Hayden, the mastermind/vocalists/guitarist behind Action Swingers, was joined at times by members from bands like Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth, Unsane and A Bones to complete his vision of demented feedback jacked punk. This 7 inch is from the early more off kilter version of the band which features Julia Cafritz, Johann Kugelberg and a one J Mascis on drums for the B side of this fucking trashy as hell raucous single. Action Swingers' gutter blues meets noise punk scrap heap ought to have cemented their reputation as cult rock heroes, but alas they've slithered back into obscurity until now. Thanks to Total Punk Records we can blast "Miserable Life" and "Losing My Cool" at top volume while crossing our fingers for a reunion show? But that's not gonna happen so you better grab this single instead.
TRASHILY RECOMMENDED !!!!
Chicago's Randy Records is back at it again, and their newest release is a fresh jangly single from Vancouver's flower punks Dead Ghosts!!!!
Following up their self-titled 2010 album on Florida's Dying, Dead Ghosts return with two more jangly garage thumpers that make us wonder where they've been hiding for so long? With a heavy dose of reverb, twang and noir, these Canadian misfits have concocted a unique twist on the all too common Nuggets meets Crypt Records garage format many bands are peddling these days. Maybe it's the extra fuzz or the slide guitar or the dark murder ballad vibe, but damn we hope these songs are the direction Dead Ghosts are heading. And if that's the case we need their new album now. Fans of the Black Lips, Last Years Men and Reigning Sound will certainly listen to these songs over and over again. SUPER RECOMMENDED.
Originally included as a bonus single for the folks that pre-ordered "I Bet On Sky" from Jagjaguwar back in 2012, these non-album cuts finally get a legitimate release. Both cuts would've fit cozily on "I Bet On Sky" but stand on their own just fine. Side A is a classic Mascis moaner with full strum melodies and captivating guitar work while the B side is a Barlow penned bass driven distorto mid tempo cut that more than holds its own. And no Dinosaur Jr record would be complete if it didn't include some decidedly wicked guitar explosions in there making all sorts of glorious racket. Recommended.
We flipped our lids over the wax edition of "Exmilitary" which is sadly out of print these days but now you can crank this sucker on tape.
This group is one giant breath of fresh air as far as we are concerned and this is some of the most original and exciting sounds in Hip Hop or modern music period. "Exmilitary" is extremely confrontational with a roughneck attitude that is at the same time ultra catchy. This record is brimming with awesome samples taken from Jane's Addiction, Link Wray, Pink Floyd, Beastie Boys and that's just the tip of the iceberg! All this crazy stuff is crammed together, given some hard-hitting jeep beats and fronted by MC Ride's compelling gravel coated bark. Commence to spinning this monster on repeat at ungodly volumes!
Custom built for auto-reverse. AHHHHHHH! YEAH! GUILLOTINE!
Redonkulously Recommended.
