Revocation

Saturday I attended the, ahem, Summer Slaughter at the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip. Here's the list of bands.

Rings of Saturn
Aeon
Revocation
The Ocean
Cattle Decapitation
Norma Jean
Periphery
Animals as Leaders
Dillinger Escape Plan

I'm currently writing a review of it for Joup - despite the ridiculous name for the tour it was a very good time. Revocation is a band I'd never heard of that I really, really liked. Here's their bandcamp. I came home from the show and looked them up, found this and downloaded it for free from the Scion AV website, which is apparently the car Scion's lifestyle marketing division or some other such nonsense. A car company with a lifestyle marketing division? This is indeed a disturbing universe in which we cohabitate with giant slug gods of the apocalypse (aka corporations). All I had to do was give them my email and I received the record for free. Not sure how this benefits the band (hopefully they all received free Scions and then they sacrificed them to the nether beasts of Metaldom) but I'm sure the corporation made it worth their while to some degree. Anyway, the album is really good, old school thrash with a death-metal twist. If you grew up with megadeth's Rust in Peace (before asshead mustaine re-recorded and ruined the vocals) or Testament's Low you'll probably dig this. Revocation's not reinventing the wheel, but maybe because I'm not aware of anything current that scratches this particular itch I'm really enjoying it. My advice: skip Scion and download it for $4.99 from the bandcamp - it's well worth it.

RIP Dennis Farina

More bad news earlier today: Dennis Farina died. Today sucks!

I was first introduced to the man in Crime Story, a show I LOVED when it aired back when I was a wee lad in the 80's. I haven't seen it since, but I have such strong memories of certain things from the show, like when two of the characters (Ray Deluca? without looking it up I think that's right or at least close) and someone else hiding out in a nuclear testing area made to look like a subdivision? And Farina, always awesome. Then of course who could forget Mr. Farina in Guy Ritchie's Snatch, one of my all time favorite performances in one of my all time favorite movies.

New Jesu in September, New Pale Sketcher NOW!!!

Well, I received some bad news today in the form of an old friend passing away. Not someone I knew terribly well - he was an older guy who was a regular at the bar I tended in Chicago from 2001 to 2006. Every year when I go home to Chicago he's one of the few that I see. I didn't agree with a lot of what he said, but I loved the guy. A lot.

Well, I walked in the house dreary from the news and when I fired up the old Com-pu-ter Brooklyn Vegan helped take the edge off by posting some fucking awesome news:

New Jesu record out on September 24th. And the title hit home: Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came. Leave it to Mr. Justin K. Broadrick - the guy's a legend for all the right reasons. Along with this BV dropped news of a new Pale Sketcher over on that particular Broadrick project's bandcamp. Here's one of them, go to the Vegan page for more of the particulars and hit the bandcamp full throttle for more Broadrick tunes.

First Veronica Mars Footage out of ComicCon (via Aintitcoolnews)

I still maintain that the first season of Veronica Mars is among the best stories I've ever seen on television. All three seasons are great, but season one just really, really hums. GREAT writing.

Via Aintitcoolnews where they have more info here.

Night of the 80's Undead

image courtesy of jasinmartin.deviantart.com

Great new comic, Night of the 80's Undead. Read about it HERE in this week's Thee Comic Column, only on Joup

Nitzer Ebb - Join the Chant

Oh, why not?

To make up for angering you with that Pearl Jam/Motorhead comparison (not really a comparison, but could easily be mistaken for one. ANYWAY...)

Pearl Jam - Mind Your Manners and Pass Me the Motorhead Greatest Hits Eddie, Would'ja?

I swear, when I first heard this last week it came on the radio in the background and just based on the guitar and snare drum I thought it was Motorhead. Then the chorus has a little bit of a 'State of Love and Trust' thing going on. I respect the hell out of this band, but haven't cared about anything they've done in SOOOOO long. Ten's a classic, Vs. has a handful of great songs on it (Go, Animal, WMA) and Vitalogy has Satan's Bed. After that... well, Matt Cameron joining made me a little interested but not enough to actually get to know anything. This album will probably be the same thing - I'll ignore it. Maybe not, but probably. However, right now I think this song deserves chronicling. It's not great, but it's interesting just for the sake of the above-mentioned confusion.