The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation - Roadburn

I was actually lucky enough to be in the room when this performance was recorded, and it was a fascinating hour spent staring at the intense visuals the band had prepared to play alongside their live show. It was one of the more memorable experiences from Roadburn 2012, so I'm very grateful indeed that the entire thing was recorded and released later on as a double 12" package.

Equally delicate as it is at moments crushingly bleak; the twisting, muted soundscapes of The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation are the perfect soundtrack to any form of introspective deviance, be it sensory deprivation, psychedelic drug use or just playing GTA V on mute with this blaring at full volume. Yeah.

Anyway, irregardless of my inane rambling, this is bloody fantastic. 

Nunslaughter - The Devils Congeries - Volume 1

This double CD package brings together a bunch of old splits and demos from the prolific, blackened grinding thrashers Nunslaughter, as well as a bevvy of live tracks. The splits and demos are fantastic, and I will surely review them on their own with the material from the respective splitting bands, but I just want to cast some light on this little package as I got my hands on a copy recently. Do you love Nunslaughter? Yes? Good. Do you love horrendously recorded live material? Er…

Unfortunately, about a third of disc one and the entirety of disc two is nothing but awful recordings of live performances. I picked this CD up when I recently bought some second hand cymbals so I didn’t pay too much for it so I’m not particularly bothered, but don’t be fooled by the ace looking art and fancy 2 disc set. This is handy if you can get it cheap and want all the old Nunslaughter stuff in one place, but the sheer volume of crap live tracks really cheapens this package, which is a shame. Definitely for die-hards and collectors only. 

Here are some tracks off the Blood Devil 7", which appears on disc one.

Embalming Theatre / Swarrrm - Split 12"

Another record that I have been meaning to buy for years and years and years. I finally got it cheap at Obscene Extreme (like, Obscenely cheap ;D) and whilst I was chuffed to pieces to pick up a split 12" for round-abouts the price of a split 7" I was gutted as fuck to find out that the material here is all live! Maaaaan, why can't I ever research these things properly? The amount of surprises I've had just by spinning a fucking vinyl is bloody unbelievable! I know it's my fault but I cannot shake the disappointment.

 

I am not familiar with the works of Swarrrm so less than ten seconds into the horrendously recorded live set I've turned the bastard thing off. Embalming Theatre on the other hand have bizarrely placed a 7" worth of original material before their live tracks, which is a proper strange move but one that I applaud them for as it totally saves this 12" for me. The band never fail in their blast and gurgle approach, and kick things off with the oddball track "Tsunami Pt I: Survived to be Gangraped". Well, isn't that an unfortunate set of circumstances?

The live set that follows the studio tracks isn't that bad either; the quality is very acceptable and is probably a sound desk recording or something similar. There's a few Embalming Theatre classics here as well so that's more reason to be happy; "Someone Else in my Coffin" and "Get High on a Dead Dog" still sound amazing live. This 12" was put out by the possibly Pig Destroyer-obsessed Jennifer Grind Records, and is limited to 500 copies.

Carnival of Carnage - Chilli Con Carnage

 

 

Carnival of Carnage appears to be a pre-Tumour project of Rogore (ex-LDOH). As far as I can tell it was a fairly short lived affair, with one album, one EP and one live 7" (this). It's pretty cool to listen to, it's like Tumour with a full band and a bit more of a groove. I don't know if I necessarily would have bought this record if I'd known it was a live 7" (I'm always the best at researching beforehand) but it's out on Bringer of Gore and is cheap as chips, so no worries there. For cruddily-recorded goregrind fans only.

Swans - Swans Are Dead

This marks the first time in fuuuuuuck knows how long I've actually paid full retail price for a CD (by that I mean £9 or higher) but it is just impossible to get the career-end late 90s Swans stuff anywhere any cheaper (in Britain, at least). Swans Are Dead is a retrospective live album, released not that long after their original demise, and features two discs of live performances. 1995-1997 was an interesting time for Swans, having gone full circle through the spectrum of non-threatening genres, the band were on the verge of returning to their downright weird and extremely experimental ways when they abruptly ended. The mega-oversized Soundtracks of the Blind amply documents this, and Swans Are Dead is the live album for that era that accompanies it.

There are two discs, one is a show from '95 and the other from '97, and despite this they flow pretty well and I originally thought when I downloaded it that it was the same show spread on both discs. It's even a different line up and I didn't realise - perhaps I'm losing my touch? Or would that be my hearing? Anyway, Swans Are Dead showcases the band's very experimental final tour and is a slice of a place in time that was once very sad and nostalgic. Now that Swans have reformed however, the Are Dead set hasn't lost any meaning; the Swans here is unlike any other period in the band's lucid history so it still stands up with the rest of the catalog, even today. Out on Young God Records.