O.A.P. - Human Milkshake

O.A.P. (or Onanistic Anti-Peristalsis for short) were a death metal band based in Newport, Wales. I believe they finally kicked the bucket sometime around 2013/14 and Human Milkshake was their only album release. They featured members of death metal bands Necrocest and Cryptophile, as well as having local promoter / general all round good egg Sam Wall as one of the vocalists.

Human Milkshake gets better as it goes on; personally I find the opening track "Jeremy Kyle" hilarious yet a bit repetitive, but the guys quickly fall into a gurgling groove which should satisfy the nastiest of death metal bloodhounds. The inclusion of shouted vocals alongside the gutturals and inhales is an interesting choice but adds a fresh dynamic to a tried and tested formula of music. A tidy production job as well, rounds the whole thing off with a surprisingly heavy hit for a drum machine band. Top stuff!

I miss the O.A.P. shenanigans. Reunion tour?

Desecration - Gore & PerVersion 2

The story surrounding Gore & Perversion always comes up at some point with Welsh metalheads over a certain age - we all have our own stories to tell about it, and there's always one person who knows someone who also knows someone who's uncle's dog still has an pristine, uncensored copy of the original. But thanks to the absolute twattery and/or dickfuckery of Gwent police, a piece of death metal history has been blasted off the face off the earth in the name of "decency". Why don't you go and tell the sweatshop child slaves making dresses for Primark that Britian is a decent and proper society?

Anyyyyway, several years later, with the complete loss of their debut album more than likely weighing on them in some way shape or form, self-styled Welsh "death metal bastards" Desecration re-recorded everything and put it out as Gore & PerVersion 2, although this time with a much tamer cover picture. If you want to see the drummer getting a blowy in a graveyard then you at least have to open the booklet first. So yeah, repackage the entire album with a close-up of something horrible happening and shorten "Infantile Anal Intercourse" to "I.A.I." and suddenly Gore & Perversion is now totally acceptable for our decent and proper society to consume. What a fucking massive load of shit.

But the silver lining here is that Version 2 is much, much better than the original. It's hard to beat a grubby old school death metal independent release, but Version 2 was recorded by a band who had found their feet in their own unique and super-brutal niche of death metal. If I ever want to listen to Gore & Perversion I come to this release, although the original has now been re-released several times with censored artwork.

Anyway, don't listen to me because I'm an idiot. Check it out below.

The Judas Cradle - The Self-Inflicted EP

Warning! Self-promotional post!

 

I just wanna take a post to tell you all about my new grindcore band The Judas Cradle (google the definition for epic luls and potential cringing). Formed out of the ashes of Newport death metal crew O.A.P., The Judas Cradle became a real thing in September of last year. We’ve have been rehearsing pretty much weekly since, and we recorded our debut EP in our rehearsal space. It was released in December online, and we had physical copies made up in January, which were all put together lovingly by our guitarist Will.

 

We have about a 100 of them to go around at shows and shit, but this EP is available to be spread far and wide on the net. So give it a download, rate it or hate it. If by some astronomical odds you fancy a copy you can get one off my Discogs page!

 

Grind it!

 

Led By Lions - A Long Time Coming

Led By Lions are a band that are fairly local to me, with members hailing from several areas of South Wales. This band was born from the ashes of long-running metal-meets-pop-punk group Man Of The Hour, who have been flogging the local circuit in various guises since 2007, so A Long Time Coming has been, well...a long time coming, really. Led By Lions is essentially the final incarnation of Man Of The Hour, with the added inclusion of a new full-time frontman, Scott Randall. Former vocalist/guitarist Richard Meyrick now focuses entirely on his guitar role, and the main back up vocals are provided instead by second guitarist James Heard (and the rest of the band in a live setting, no doubt). 

The first notable thing about Led By Lions other than the new vocals is the chunky, impressively professional production standard and heavy sound. Without being over-triggered, the drums are solid and dense in the mix, as is, rather nicely, the bass (provided by Small Fortunes / Start! Start! lunatic Gareth Burrough). I'm not sure what tuning this is all recorded in, but it adds a welcome grating metal edge to what would essentially be a very melodic and poppy performance. 

This was self-financed and self-released by the band themselves, and you can hear the EP in it's entirety if you are using Spotify (clicky clicky). Physical copies will be available later in the year, and you can also check out the promo video for the song "Fall Of A Giant" below. 

Lines In Wax Trivia: The "Fall Of A Giant" music video features appearances from 3/4s of the band Start! Start!. The only Start! Start! member not included in the video is me. 

Small Fortunes - Say What You See

Ho ho! Now this is something that I have watched grow from a silly one-minute-something demo into a full-blown project of epic proportions. Introducing my good ol' pal Gareth B, whom is a fellow band-mate with me in Merthyr Tydfilian based rap metal (yes!) group Start! Start!. Mr. B is always grooving our tunes up with his mad bass skills, but he doesn't get much chance to shine on the mic. That's where Small Fortunes comes in; Gareth B shows us his unique view on the world with this swanky and professional-as-fuck four track EP.

 

Lamenting us through the medium of auto-tune like some bastard lovechild of Ke$ha and Nate Dogg, Small Fortunes takes us into four real life scenarios told through the exciting method of songwriting. "Baldman Beatdown" tells us how Mr. B mashed up a cider-swilling lout at his local bar, "Mr. Sunday Night" is the hilarious tale of a bloke that he met in the local chippy who didn't know what day it was, "Crows Nest" is a backlash reaction to some over-enthusiastic music critic, and "A Birthday To Remember" shares the toilet-rattling tale of getting the shits after his birthday meal. I was present for that one, and boy it was ugly!

Despite the enormously sexy artwork, this EP is burned onto CDr, although you'd never guess because Gareth B has put so much love into this little package. The CDrs are styled like lil' 5" vinyls, which is right up my street, and the production on the songs by Downtown Studios' Uncle Richard is very polished and modern. The cartoony artwork by Lauren Orrells is the finishing touch here. These motherfuckers are limited to 50 copies, so act fast and get one from Small Fortunes whilst the going is good! I also have the first Small Fortunes promo single "Caution! Wet Floor!" download card free with every Pointless Records order, so get in!