Sissy Spacek - Gate

Excellent noisecore-meets-harsh noise project (I'm sorry if you are unaware of these subgenres, that sentence must look ridiculous) from the USA. Definitely something that will push the boundaries of my listening patience if all mushed together into one big cube, simply due to the frequency of the distortions used, however once broken up into grinding chunks of noisecore I find it much more humanly consumable, which is just great, folks.

This is one of those things that makes 7 minutes feel almost like an hour. If you like the noise-equivalent of someone scratching their nails on a blackboard to a bunch of blastbeats, then I wholeheartedly recommend this 7" record. Imagine early Anal Cunt overlapped with cripplingly-loud layers of 90s-era Merzbow or Masonna. Your gran would love it, fam.

Cattle Decapitation - Ten Torments Of The Damned

I love this 7", simply because it is so far removed from what Cattle Decapitation would become, and also because most people have absolutely no idea that it exists. I saw Cattle Decap recently and the thought of them breaking into anything off of this amused me greatly, although I would be super stoked to see how Travis would handle doing vocals on this material. This is a relic from the past, and a super cool look at how one of the juggernauts of the current death metal scene began their career. If you've never heard it, I think you are definitely going to be in for a bit of a shock.

Ten Torments Of The Damned showcases a completely different band and musical style. The band was still in very early days, playing some sort of cranky version of hi-energy hardcore punk. I guess you could say this would fall into the powerviolence ballpark. Several members would quickly go on to form The Locust (now you know where you've heard those vocals before, right?) and really push the boundaries within this genre of music.

I once owned the beautiful clear 7", but it was robbed from me by some mouth-breathing redneck in a botched trade. I have no words that can vilify that individual enough. Anyway - check this out!

Archagathus / No Thought - Split 7"

I’ve never encountered No Thought before, but I really enjoyed their mix of styles. Many bands do the whole doom-into-grind thing, but No Thought seem to pull it off rather seamlessly here, which is fuckin’ great. The production is thick and crunchy (mmmmm yummy) and based more in the low-end of the spectrum, and reminds me rather poetically of Rotten Sound mixed with early Brutal Truth. Well worth a listen, I’d wager, if you’re into both the fast and slow aspects of heavy music.

 

Archagathus seem to have a bigger line up here than usual? The over-all sound is much more polished as well, which is a first for me. I need to check the dates on these 7”s that I have; perhaps most of the Archagathus stuff I’ve heard is the older material, as this sounds fairly different to what I’ve gotten used to. Things are most definitely much tighter around the edges, and the production is not as harsh. The super-growly vokills are still evident, as is the group’s punky playing style, but everything seems to have been tidied up a bit. Still sounds fuckin’ cool though!

 

This 7” was released by the Uranium Overdose label.

The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die (Box Set)

Hello and welcome to the Lines In Wax 250th post extravaganza! It's taken just over two years (and just under 20k hits), but we got there in the end, eh? It only seems like yesterday that I was doing the 100th post special; I can't believe how fast time goes. Anyway, here's to the next 250 posts...it's safe to say I already know what I'm gonna do for the big 500th - now that's thinking ahead. Cheers all!

Holy mother, look at the size of this package! (That's what she definitely did not say). Whilst I question the point in splitting an entire album over a series of 7"s (didn't Botch do something like this once?) I gotta admit that it looks absolutely fucking cool as fuck. Granted, it is a massive potch changing the disc over after every single song, but I did play them all through once just for the sheer fuck of it. The Prodigy seem to release all their own stuff these days through the oddly-named Take Me To The Hospital label, which is a sub-label of the UK independent Cooking Vinyl. This box is a walloper of a collector's item as you can probably tell from the photos, and it includes 5 orange 7"s, a CD/DVD version of the album, a bonus CD entitled Lost Beats, a poster and a bunch of graffiti stencils in case you love The Prodigy a little bit too much and have to tag that shit all up over the neighbourhood.

 

 

Invaders Must Die is a strong record. I'm not sure if it really is the logical progression for Liam Howlett and co., but there are plenty of absolute facking bangers in this little box. "Omen" I'm sure you've all heard a hundred thousand times on the tele; on music channels, as background music on TV programs from 2009 and as the theme song for every single fucking cage fighter this side of the fucking atlantic ocean. "Thunder" brings massive dub wup wups and ragga-man talky-talking to the table, whilst "Colours" is catchy and fast enough to still be played to the sweat-drenched, ecstasy-guzzling rave crowd. 

 

My favourite song on this album though would have to be "Warrior's Dance", which opens up all epic and grandiose as fuck, before breaking into a filthy beat led by a squeaky-voiced female that seems to have fallen out of  a crappy hardsytle mp3 mix and onto this record. As a rule I normally hate the squeaky-voiced shite that is slathered all over bedroom-grade dance music, but we all know that this vocal style was stolen from the rave scene and guess who were big leaders back then....The fuckin' Prodigy! So it's ok for them to use squeaky voices in songs. That's logical right? My second favourite song is actually the mostly-instrumental "Omen Reprise", that for a bit, almost sounds like latter-day Gary Numan. Unfortunately for purists, this short track is excluded from the orange 7"s for some pointless fucking reason. 

Just as unfortunately, Lost Beats isn't up to much, but it does make for some half-decent background music. I think that the beats should have stayed just that; lost. Despite that, this package is absolutely awesome as piss, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they were a ginormous Prodigy fan. But, if that were the case, they'd probably own this anyway. I would severely recommend picking up the simple CD version though; if you love a bit of electronic music, that is. Right then, time to wrap this up. I've got an evening of snorting charlie and driving my Kappa-wearing slut of a girlfriend around the Gurnos estate in my Vauxhall Nova to attend to. 

The Chemical Brothers - Do It Again

Probably not my favourite Chemical Brothers tune but a good one all the while. I got this for I think £1 in Virgin Megastore when that was still around. This was released on every format possible for a single, barring tape. The 12" contains an extended mix and a different B-side, and the CD version contains an edited mix and a remix. It seems the only place to get the un-altered single (other than to buy the supporting album) is here on this white 7". Lucky me.

PS the video is hilarious. Worth a watch!