KARP - Demo 1993

KARP is the best.

Karp are universally hailed as the great lost hope of metal. Those that were lucky enough to see them live had our faces melted off our asses kicked. I'm not going to go into too much about this great band from Washington because we all know almost everything about these bros (Cobras wrote about them here). Jared is in Big Business now, who are also in Melvins. Sheesh.



Karp released 3 full lengths and a crapload of singles and eps in their short (8 year) career. There is a recent documentary about them that you should check out.

Last year this amazing demo suddenly appeared from 1993. It was released on cassette shortly before their first album was released. It rules. Get it here. 

Abomination - Abomination (1990)

Every once in a blue moon I come across something that I totally did not expect to find. With all do respect, the record stores within the area I live lack and have lacked with regards to selection, particularly metal. On occasion when The Works still had a location here in Arcata (they consolidated into one store in Eureka) I'd come across something awesome, like the first four Iron Maiden with Dickinson on vinyl, but usually it was the same old CDs, records, and tapes I had already listened to and or sold to them. One could easily try to order something but often it took forever to come in and usually one could find it cheaper online. That's why when I visit San Francisco I make a valiant attempt to visit Amoeba Records, often getting lost within the bins and three hours later walking out the door a couple hundred dollars less.

Now, it's not to say that there isn't that rare opportunity that one does happen across here in my hometown. Such was the case last Monday when I went into Missing Link Records. Missing Link opened about three to four years ago and remained an enigma of sorts in part due to their original location being off on a side street near downtown in a quaint building but also at the time we had three other record stores, now we have only two and Missing Link has helped fill the shoes of the other two after they closed their doors. It took me the better part of a year to summon up enough curiosity to actually check the store out but since then I've been surprised at what I've been able to find in there! Now I know half the people associated with the store and as I was headed by the shop while running some errands last Monday, I figured I'd swing in...

Now they have a very small selection of LPs, CDs, tapes, comics, and random knick-knacks but looks are deceiving. It didn't take me long to discover this particular gem though: Abomination - Tragedy Strikes.

I was blown away by seeing it there. It was an original pressing to boot and in surprisingly good condition. Their sound is straight forward, old-school death/thrash from Chicago, Illinois. Their sound is quite fitting for the time of release (early '90s). Imagine the best of early Death, Morbid Angel, and Obituary with a peppering of Death Strike and a light salting of early Slayer. Then again, what the hell do I know?! I say tomato, you say tomato. Anyways...

Apparently, the band is still 'active' but have not released anything since Tragedy Strikes which was released in '91. Also knowing that Paul Speckman of Master/Death Strike fame is involved, it has to rule right?! And ruling, yes it does.

I had heard Abomination years ago through a friend of mine and was thoroughly impressed. I often stumbled upon a CD of theirs in the used bins at certain record stores or on Ebay but for whatever I never actually picked up a copy of any of their albums. Not sure why. Their self-titled debut slays so when I stumbled upon Tragedy Strikes, I figured the metal gods were telling me something and that I should pick up the LP regardless of the cost. And I am quite grateful I did! While Tragedy Strikes is not as good as Abomination itself, it is still a great album. So with that in mind, I took it upon myself to scour the internet for some sort of downloadable link and or used copy for the first album, Abomination, and I was surprised to notice a lack thereof. I had to fulfill my need and find me a copy of Abomination and while both albums were eventually rereleased as a compilation last year, nothing beats the originals. So after a painstaking search, I finally located the self-titled album and as a token of my gratitude I've uploaded a link for you to enjoy yourself!

Cheers!

 Get it Here

Encyclopaedia Metallum

Scoring Spice

“Dune. Desert Planet. Arrakis. WATER.” --Kyle McLaughlin, in Lynch’s Magnum Opus, Dune
“Dune, where’s my car?” --Cobras

Many bands have tried and failed to capture the essence of Frank Herbert’s seminal, epic, orientalist space-opera, DUNE. For some, it might have been better if they had tried and died. 


It would be well-nigh impossible to document every Dune-inspired track in the universe, so these are but a sampling of the many existing varieties of Dune music. They are grouped in brackets because, as Paul Atreides has observed, "the worst potential competition for any young organism can come from its own kind."


Techno Bracket
Eon let loose in 1991 with a couple Dune-themed tracks, "The Spice Must Flow" and "Fear: The Mindkiller." "Fear: The Mindkiller" is a clear ancestor of the Mortal Kombat theme song, and samples (you guessed it!) the line "fear is the mind killer" a few thousand times. For good measure, Eon throws in a healthy dose of what sounds like the panting from Kraftwerk's "Tour De France." Because that's what Kraftwerk is awesome for-- panting.

Not shown: panting. Shown: nerding.

As bad as this may be, however, it’s still better than “German techno-pop ensemble from Münster Dune,” because by "techno pop" they mean Happy Hardcore. If you don’t know what that is, take a moment to thank the gods. You are either too young, too old, or were too under-a-rock-in-the-90s to have been exposed to this toxin. Preserve your innocence/health. If you must know, a representative track is "Can't Stop Raving," but don't say I didn't warn you. Also, Dune’s youtube page would have you know that the group is “named after the 1984 science fiction movie directed by David Lynch.” Yup. Straight from the source.

Winner: no one. No one is a winner here.

Metal Bracket
Another band of Krauts, Golem, attacked the Dune concept in their 1998 album “The 2nd Moon.” Check out the first track, The Wanderers. Featuring succinct riffage and abstract/subtly ESL lyrics (see e.g.: “Unlocking the gates of time, widening its bounds/Guarded by the maker ...facing desert ground”), Golem may actually have what it takes to make a Kwisatz Hadderach.



A further solid entry comes from Aussie rock band Buffalo (mentioned in a previous Cobras post), whose Dune Messiah takes us on a Pentagram-esque journey to Arrakis (and admit it, you always wanted to go to Arrakis with Pentagram). 

Pretty sure it would be like this...

Blind Guardian also pays a visit to the Dune-iverse in Traveller in Time. The morning sun! Of Dune! Good old Blind Guardian. If you haven’t heard this song, it’s pretty much exactly what you would expect from Blind Guardian (i.e., it is awesome, unabashed nerdery). They can really play their balisets ifyouknowwhatimean.

Picard Knows.

Also, according to a reliable source (wikipedia, duh), Iron Maiden tried to name To Tame A Land “Dune,” but Frank Herbert was having none of it. Apparently the band was told that "Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially bands like Iron Maiden." Good call on that one, F. Herb. 

Frank Herbert hates you. 

PS: Dreamtheater fans will be delighted to admit to you that Dreamtheater covered "To Tame A Land."  

Winner: Vote your choice in the comments. You are the dungeonmaster! You get to decide!

• Blind Guardian
• Buffalo
• Golem
• Iron Maiden
• Dreamtheater

Prog/Jazz Bracket

More to F. Herb’s taste might be the smooth stylings of one Dave Matthews (!), a jazz keyboardist from Kentucky who hung out with James Brown and was apparently moved to gather together a bunch of other jazz players (Grover Washington, Eric Gale) and write several Dune-themed songs which readers should check out at their own risk. These are all on a 1977 album Dave Matthews titled, wait for it, “Dune.” The creativity here just does not end... or at least, not until the second side of the album, where Dave gives us NOT ONLY a disco-fied version of the Star Wars main theme (it was 1977, so Lucas didn’t quite know what he had on his hands), but also a limp cover of David Bowie's Space Oddity. On a related note, the only tolerable part of the latter song was sampled by MF (“Metal Face/Fingers”) Doom in Rap Snitch Knishes. You know. Like you do. Wait, what was I talking about?

Ah yes. Another entry in the Dune prog bracket are French prog rockers Dün, about whom we have previously heard. An interesting compare and contrast exercise may be done by playing Dave Matthew's "Arrakis" and Dün's “Arrakis” back to back. Go on. Try it.






Winner:

• Dave Matthews
• Dün

Video Game Bracket
Yes, evidently there were at least two about a million soundtracked Dune videogames. Kids these days. Don’t they know about books? Require a little effort on your part, make no be-be-be-be-beeps. Anywho.

1992 saw the release of not one, but TWO Dune videogames. The first was called “Dune” by Cryo Interactive, and it carried a soundtrack called "Dune: Spice Opera." It’s not so bad, from what I can tell. Also, at 1:55 of the track embedded below, "Sign of the Worm," you can see a sweet rendering of Shai-Hulud in 1992 graphics. 

  
A competing video game company, Westwood Studios, released “Dune II” that same year; check out this sweet dialogue: “We were your pawns and Dune was your board.” The score is basically 8-bit plus. In 1998, Westwood Studios released “Dune: 2000” scored in part by professional video game composer Frank Klepaki. Good old Frank K. does a musical homage to/rip off of Toto’s score to Lynch’s Dune here on this track at about 3:22-32; otherwise, this is fairly unremarkable stuff.


Winner:

• Dune: Spice Opera
• Dune II
• Klepaki
• No one, again

Dune OST Bracket
The Lynch Dune OST has been reported on here, but I thought I might add a few words. Two of those words are "Brian Eno." Two more words are “fuck yeah.”

but of course there is a fuckyeaheno.com

For the sake of completeness, here is the theme music from the Dune television series, composed by the dude who did the soundtrack to Final Destination V. If you have ever watched any sci-fi movie and heard some generic background symphonics, you’ve basically heard it. Speaking of orientalism, there’s also a Bonus New Age Track.


Winner: Toto/Eno OST. I’m sorry, this is just objective. Please send your complaints to James Madison.

Well, there you have it, friends. A smattering of the aural representations of the Dune-iverse. Please feel free to add on in the comments.

Behold Kris Mar, newest addition to the IllCon Team! Hail Kris Mar! May the rivers run red with the blood of your fallen foes, and may vampires tremble and expire at your feet just as they do under the mighty ax of Abe Lincoln!
I am impressed with the nerdiness contained herein, please feel free to contribute further in the future. Sweet.

-Cobras

DARKTHRONE - SOULSIDE JOURNEY (1991)

Hate to disappoint the wax-moustache-and-skinny-pants crowd, but I've never been much of a Darkthrone fan. Transilvanian Hunger (just about everyone's original introduction to the band, it seems) always struck me as a low-quality, repetitive bore, and their following albums just got worse and worse as the years progressed. I even tried tuning back in recently after reading some positive press on their "newer" stuff (F.O.A.D., Circle The Wagons, Black Flags, et al.), but I found those albums to be a cross between laughable and cringe-inducing, just sloppy black and roll with some of the worst, self-referential lyrics possible ("I Am The Working Class"? Huh?). Honestly, I just don't get it. Fenriz is probably a rad dude to sit and guzzle suds with, but I'm just not feeling his jams. Sorry. Any and all hate mail should be sent directly to illogicalcontraption(at)yahoo(dot)com.
There are exceptions within Darkthrone's lackluster discography, though, mainly (and predictably for ol' Uncle Cobras), their "death metal" album Soulside Journey. I fucking love this album, and even the handful of scratchy demos that preceded it. Sure, it's not much of a departure from the millions of other DM albums that were floating around Scandinavia at the time, but the riffs are pretty cool, the grooves are crushing, the drum work is solid, and the overall tone, atmosphere, and aesthetic is just leaps and bounds beyond the generic corpsepainted cemetery tomfoolery that this band immediately adopted upon the release of 1992's A Blaze In The Northern Sky.
Boring band, awesome album. Let's fight.

Download HERE
Purchase HERE

Metallum/Last.FM

LOLS.

BLACK SABBATH - FORBIDDEN (1995)

You would think that after such a long absence, I might return bearing worthwhile gifts for my beloved readership, but alas, no such luck on this sunny Thursday afternoon--today I present you with naught but pure, undiluted garbage, in the form of the mighty Black Sabbath's final studio embarassment, Forbidden.
What constituted "Black Sabbath" in 1995 was a sad diminishment from even their lineup in 1992, much less the Dio years, much much less their heyday in the early-to-mid-seventies. What we have here is a broken, limping, generic-riff machine fronted by terminal no-name Tony "The Cat" Martin (above right), who even with the omnipresent Tony Iommi (no Geezer at this point--he was busy with GZR. LOL!) in tow couldn't muster an ounce of thunder on this resounding fart of an attempt at "hard rock". The handsome and talented Cozy Powell (who was later replaced by Blue Oyster Cult's Bobby Rondinelli, a dude that subsequently attempted to steal my girlfriend in the mid-00's--true story) rounded out the squadron on skins, but his servicable thumping is piss in an ocean to the utter, anachronistic misstep that is this album.

Did I mention that Ernie C from Body Count (left) was hired to produce this album? Or that esteemed thespian Ice T himself makes an appearance on the opening track? It's all true, which, in a way, is the only selling point to this album. It's pure novelty/curiosity, this ill-fated pairing of British rock legends and talentless urban street toughs, and really the only reason I brought it up today is that I find Tony Iommi's idea of what was "hip" and "edgy" in 1995 just about the most hilarious thing imaginable. His "go-to" was Body Count. Think about that shit.
Anyways, sorry to drop this turd in your proverbial punch bowl today, but hey, you can't win 'em all. Keep your head up, and just remember: RUSTY ANGELS, THEY CAN'T FLY.
Apologies.

Don't download HERE
Don't purchase HERE



Enjoy a low-budget documentary about the Tony Martin Era of Sabbath:

Brave New World and a Half

Although its roots remained firmly planted in the buddy-comedy genre of previous decades, the offshoot emergence of the buddy-cop subgenre in the mid 1960’s began posing a challenge to post-war American society. Despite some tentative steps that decade, it wasn’t until the 1970’s that the buddy cop movie first began testing the limits of traditional social norms. It was in 1976, when the unthinkable happened; a woman became the buddy to the cop. While the foundations of the status quo were surely shaken to their roots by this and other ruptures, it wasn’t until almost a decade later that the genre really began to come into its own.

The 80’s proved to be the heyday of the buddy-cope genre, a time when the form truly crossed a threshold and, dare I say it, forever changed the face of American cinema. This is thanks to the release of Beverly Hills Cop in 1984, a film which pushed the envelope for African American characters in American cinema. That year, the floodgates weren’t just opened, they were swept from their very hinges. Buddy-Cop films became the leading edge of a social revolution, recasting conventional stereotypes with greater subtlety and nuance and daring us as individual citizens and as a nation to question long held assumptions about workplace integration and traditional ways of combining comedy and action. By the end of the ‘80’s, new and more daring buddy-cop entries arrived monthly, addressing complex social issues each time. Women buddy-cops reappeared, Soviet/American buddy cops, Japanese/American buddy cops, dog/human buddy cops (it’s own sub-sub-genre!) human/alien buddy cops, and even federal/municipal buddy cops. The 80’s was a cultural and political minefield, but Buddy Cops were ready for the challenge.

As the decade came to a close however, it seemed that the Buddy-Cop had reached its apex. It was a heady and inspiring time in America, daily forging a new nation of comedic multicultural camaraderie on the screen. Yet, at the same time the very maturity of this groundbreaking genre prevented it from fully remaking society in its own revolutionary image. The Buddy-Cop could apparently go no further. They may have been a symbol of all that was right with America, but the genre’s aesthetic complexity remained out of reach of the very beneficiaries of the new America that the buddy-cop was carving; children under ten.

In the early years of the 1990’s the genre was foundering, seemingly unable to carry through its promise of a greater society. In the bowels of Hollywood however, a chance encounter between two screen-powerhouses was brewing the formula of a new Buddy Cop that would very nearly achieve the status of its progenitors. With almost half a century of collective experience in the television industry, Henry Winkler and Burt Reynolds had a bone-deep understanding of the American intellect. But how do you translate all the complex socio-cultural commentary of Buddy Cops into an ageless cypher?

The answer turned out to be deceptively simple. By taking the touchstone of modern buddy cop cinema, Axel Foley, and effectively shrinking him into an 8 year old child, the genre became palatable to even the most sensitive of American tastes. While Foley had been a comedic loose-cannon, albeit a “good guy”, he was still a ‘black-man’ and this represented a traditional threat to whiteness that his goofy smile could never quite temper. All the imminent sexuality, violence and anger that black men represent in the white American mythos vanished and was replaced by a cute, well scrubbed and innocuous child that needed to be protected from his own naivete. With Burt Reynolds as the cigar-smoking excessive-force-using bitter old man rougue-Cop to this new incarnation of the Buddy, it was a miraculous reconception of paternalism that transcended metaphor entirely.

Cop and a Half is streaming right now on NutFlex, so go and see the the film that made the 90's the 'cool' decade.

Further Down the Rabbit Hole of SHIT: Counting Crows Fan Art

So hey. The death of music blogs is upon us. It's inevitable that Illogical Contraption will get shut down eventually by the evil record companies. In light of these recent Nazi-esque crackdowns we decided to become a full time fan art blog. Enjoy!

Nailbomb - Point Blank (1994)

This album should need no introduction whatsoever.

In fact, I don't have anything relevant to say at the moment anyway.

All I know is that the picture above is a good representation of how I feel right now (and probably look). My brain is fried due to my academic ventures (its finals week) and I have been under the gun so-to-speak the last three to four weeks.
In a nutshell, this album fits my overall mood at present.

Plus, I haven't contributed a post here on IllCon for at least a couple weeks so I kind of owe it to y'all I suppose.

So without further ado, I think I'm gonna go get hammed on Oly and listen to this noise on repeat for the next few hours while trying to repress the memories of the past weeks' events...
Sounds fun huh? Why don't you join me? Crap! For Fuck's Sake, I'm out of Oly.
Nevermind.

Must. Numb. Mind. Now.

Be Proud To Commit Commercial Suicide here
not here

(unlike these guys)

Metallum / Last.FM

Public Enemy - Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age (1994)

Muse Sick-n-Hour Mess Age was released in 1994. This was a post "The Chronic" world and rap glorifying drug use and violence was already the status quo for a couple years. PE was considered "old" and "corny" by most fans of the genre and the bad reviews started flowing in before the album even came out. The decline of PE in the eyes of the record buying public happened so fast. The switch from party rap and political hip hop dominating the charts to the overwhelming rise and popularity of so called "gangsta rap" happened in the blink of an eye. It's almost as if the prison industrial complex and high level music executives had a secret meeting to  calculate the gangsta rap trend, fill up prisons and make a quick buck!  That's crazy though. That would never happen in our pure white America!

Here's the facts ("facts" being used loosely):

• People slept on this album when it came out which caused it to not have much of a legacy.
• People are fucking stupid and this album is THE BEST, ANGRIEST, most listenable Public Enemy album. (Challop)
• It's heavy as fuck.
• Chuck D's "message" is still as relevant today as it was in 1994 if not more so. His delivery is straight up fierce on this album. 
• This is Flavor Flav's best work! (Challop)
• This is the most GROWN up PE record, as they grew out of their sexism and gay-baiting lyrics of the previous releases. They learned from their mistakes and made better music.

Seriously, and I know I will get shit for this, I enjoy later-period PE more than the early shit. The Bomb Squad's "throw everything at the wall" style of production just has not aged well. See also Ice Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted. 

Bottom line: don't be like the great unwashed masses and sleep on this album. The songs are awesome, the music is powerful, heavy, funky and FUNNY. It's their masterpiece as far as I'm concerned. PE still had it in '94 no matter what the music press wants you to believe. Also check out that beautiful cover!

Download it!

Buy it!

The 6 Shittiest Little Brother Bands Of All Time

Being the little brother of an established rock star is a mixed blessing. Sure you can get more hype for your crap band but you will forever be in the shadow of the dickhead that kicked your ass when you were little. Here at Ill Con Labs we have been doing extensive research on the phenomena of little brother bands and we have come to this conclusion: THEY ARE ALL SHITTY.

Deep inside Ill Con LABS

Through many years of studying we can now bring you the definitive list of THE TOP SIX SHITTY LITTLE BROTHER BANDS EVER (after the jump)!

THE WEEK OF HONG 2: BLOODSPORT 3

Goddamn it, Seth. Why do you put me through this shit? I've been nothing but a friend to you, and how do you repay me? I'll tell you how: By making me sit through not one, but two goddamn Bloodsport sequels, and afterwards, I don't even get the small fucking dignity of forgetting about them altogether--OH NO, I have to actually write about the fucking things, in a way that's supposed to be "engaging" and "interesting". Well fuck you, Seth. Fuck you and the scraggly-ass VHS tape you rode in on.

Now where were we?
Ah yes, Bloodsport 3. The 1997 follow-up to the abysmal 1996 shitfest known as (surprise!) Bloodsport 2 (full-ish review HERE). I guess we might as well get this over with:



So this whole "Week of Hong" was supposed to be about the iconic actor James Hong, but to be honest, his character Sun gets killed off pretty early in this movie, being replaced as a "father-figure"/"master" by the twin team of Pat Morita (conspicuously absent for the majority of Part 2 in spite of his high billing) and a mysterious shaman called "The Judge". So, rather than dissecting Hong's performance in this particular film, I will instead use today's post as a vehicle to express my disgust at mid-90's-sequel-direct-to-video action fare, to further condemn Seth Goodkind and his frivolous journalistic requests, and to call attention to the fact that Bloodsport Fucking Four still lurks like a shadowy specter on the horizon, mocking me from the very pits of Daniel Bernhardt's dead, soulless eyes:

Click for full size and lol @ "The Most Successful Action Franchise Ever!"

This movie is ass. Surprisingly, it is slightly less ass than its predecessor, due mostly to the scene where a bad motherfucker named Beast kicks the shit out of the aforementioned Daniel Bernhardt and also the presence of comedy-dwarf John Rhys-Davies as the main antagonist. But yeah, it's pretty unbearable.
Bloodsport 3 suffers from a bit of an identity crisis: yes, they went and hired that same vaguely-European splits-enthusiast guy to pretend that he's JCVD again, and yes, the plot revolves around another "underground fighting tournament" (he has to sneak in to this one! How chilling!). But Bloodsport 3 ups the yawn factor by trying to incorporate some sort of 007 angle (Bernhadt's "Alex Cardo"--read as "Even Lower Budget Frank Dux"--has to get all dolled up in a white tux and flirt with some chick in a casino), a premise with is both laughable and a little sad. There is no intrigue, no sexual tension. Hell, there isn't even any Don Gibb.

I don't know. I don't even have enough words in my mental arsenal to fully disassemble the Bloodsport sequels and Mr. Seth J.G. Goodkind to the subterranean levels they deserve. But together, they sent me to the very deepest and darkest corners of my own private Hell, and the only way I can even attempt revenge is to suggest that others endure the same pain as I. Please experience Bloodsport 3 in all its glory forthwith:




MORE HONG HERE:

Monday April 9th
Fist of B-List - The Dynamite Brothers
From the Depths of DVD Hell - Big Trouble In Little China

Tuesday April 10th
Direct to Video Connoisseur - South Beach Academy
Lost Video Archive - Teen Lust

Wednesday April 11th
She Blogged By Night - Seventh Sin
Lost Video Archive - Cyber Bandits

Thursday April 12th
Booksteve's Library - China Girl
Lost Video Archive - Gladiator Cop
From the Depths of DVD Hell - Balls of Fury

Friday April 13th
Direct to Video Connoisseur - Caged Fury
Lines That Make Things - The A Team (TV episode)

Saturday April 14th
Illogical Contraption - Bloodsport III
Explosive Action - Ninja III: The Domination
Lost Video Archive - Blade in Hong Kong
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear - Bat Masterson and Checkmate


I made this: