One of my favourite releases from the "raw black metal" sub-genre. Harsh, uncomprimising black filth from Denmark. All of their releases are quality but this album really stands out for me.
Continuing on the theme - one of the greatest metal albums of all time. Bow down and worship.
As promised, here is the one and only Brats LP which is further removed from the Mercyful Fate metal sound and is more NWOBHM/hard rock mixed with some punk. This was before King Diamond joined the band.
Brats were a Danish punk/metal band that later became one of the greatest metal bands ever in Mercyful Fate. If you don't know who Mercyful Fate are, they basically created the black metal image and hence I often refer to them as a proto-black metal band along with stuff like Sarcofago and early Sodom, even though the music is basically thrash metal. You can recognize almost all of the songs on this as Mercyful Fate songs, albeit with some differing lyrics (it can be weird at first hearing the tune of Curse of the Pharaohs to completely different lyrics). King Diamond's unique vocals are also instantly recognizable. Compared with their 1980 LP (which I will post too), this is much more metal and might as well be a MF record. Indeed, most of these songs can also be found on Mercyful Fate reissues as bonus tracks.
Two killer bands on one split 7". Both Hooded Menace and Coffins play dark and heavy death/doom metal.
One of the greatest bands of all time. "A Guide for Beginners: The Silver Voice" is a reissue of a Russian 2-CD compilation which contained this as well as "A Guide for Finishers - A Hair of Gold". The Russian word for "finisher" means both suicide and cumming. This CD contains some of my favourite Coil tracks, including "Ostia (The Death of Pasolini)" and "Batwings (A Liminal Hymn)", which was played at John Balance's funeral service. Coil is music as abstract art.
Lately I've been finding and listening to some Russian music. Театр Яда are one of my most interesting discoveries so far. This album is experimental, strongly leaning towards industrial and darkwave. Its also quite weird and mysterious, probably even moreso because of the band's origin and the fact that I can't find anything at all written about them that isn't in Russian.
Download self-titled LP
Fuck Politics, Lets Riot!
Download
14/88!
Japanese hardcore/punk rules. Thats all there is to it. It seems that with almost whatever they do, the Japanese are always one step ahead with craziness, and hence generally rule more than their overseas counterparts that they are (often) emulating. This compilation contains some of the most ruling bands from the 80s Jap hc/punk scene. GISM needs no introduction, anyone that is in any way familiar with the Jap scene should worship these maniacs. Zouo is another of my favourites, the tracks here are really good as well, up there with the awesomeness of "The Final Agony" EP. The rest of the bands are great too, basically this comp just rules so get it.
This is something different. Lo-fi indie beach pop summer jamz. Lyrics are incredibly lame (really simple stuff about boys, weed, stuff like that), but still somehow so good. Music is very simple but somehow incredibly addictive. I guess stuff like this is really popular now? I don't know, with the Pitchfork crowd or whatever. I don't care, this is one of my favourite records of the year, hands down. Sit back and think about summer and the beach, times when things were simpler, life was easier to handle, and you could sit around and and laugh with friends and not have a care in the world.
