Kevin Drumm - Purge

When you are underground noise musician, you release million selling chart-busters that have you making noise with another famous underground noise musician, and for some reason, it's worse than either of the solo releases that you two bros have put out. Also, you release cassettes that are impossible to find because nobody owns a cassette tape player so it doesn't matter that nobody is able to find them. You generally release approximately 73 of these cassettes every two weeks. If you are a lazy cunt, you just put them on CD-R's, take them to the record store, and slip them in with the Cake CDs.

Luckily, Kevin Drumm is a scary bearded ghost man who not only rarely performs, but wisely releases an "official solo release" every year (from about 1999 to 2005) or every couple years (nothing in 2006 from the man!) This is an awesome thing because it makes his discography easy to keep track of, and because he's the fucking MASTER, he is able to keep each one of his releases distinct from the ones around it, and never stays in the same place for long. Each release moves forward from the last, introducing some new element or blowing an existing element out of proportion.

Which brings us to Purge. It is his longest release since 2002's terribly face-melting all-out fucking masterwork Sheer Hellish Miasma. A (presumably) limited amount of copies was put out on iDEAL Recordings, who released Wolf Eyes's Black Wings Over The Sand earlier this year. I downloaded an MP3 rip from a Hipinion YSI thread. It's all one track. It is about an hour long and there are one or two silence breaks. Not sure if there are official "tracks" here, but there could be. The first 15 minutes or so consist of some seriously whited out trebly "suck on this, Matthew Bower" dentist-drill-from-hell noise. Then there's this huge change and it's a fucking rumble in the jungle, let me tell you, and man, it makes me jump the fuck up in surprise and utter terror. Kevin Drumm knows how to vary it up, he does. Throughout this bad boy, we have some horrible screeching whiteness, low-end mega-distorto, seizurous electrospazz, what sounds like heavily treated metal riffing, and some ambient cool-down relaxation to bring it all home. And then just when you think it's all over, the dude lays on some seriously stomach-churning synthesizer fuckery. Quite the journey. For some reason, it ends with a field recording that consists of church bells, somebody playing trumpet, what sounds like a door being slammed, and a brass ensemble playing some slow delightful wedding music or some shit. Kevin Drumm is certainly a weird and funny human being.

Rating: Throughout the decade, Kevin Drumm has been continuously plunging headfirst into new realms of extreme brutality. And boy, is Purge no exception. What a fucking massive work this is, even more scrotum-slashingly abrasive than Land of Lurches or Impish Tyrant. It's good to have him back!

Song: A bunch of pictures that my girlfriend and I took on Photo Booth! God bless TECHNOLOGY, dang

wolves in throne room - two hunters

hunters of bread, pasta and pussy, lots of cunt juice flowing down their chins and flowing down their beards, i like a nice round dick to touch and smell when i'm trapped inside the bowels of hell

this album smells like a banana

score:

MV & EE with the Golden Road - Gettin' Gone

I heard some other album of theirs not too long ago. It was called Green Blues and was recorded with a completely different road. It sounded like some serious sleepy-time LSD droney folk jamz, that is what it sounded like. The one time I listened to it, I fell asleep on the train. Then I came home, listened to the rest, thought about the women in my life, and probably fell asleep again. So on that particular day and under those particular circumstances, it was just that kind of record album, it was.

Those days are no more, though, and now we have a whole new long-player from this happy couple that is a bearded woman and man, fighting together, I can teach you, teach you something, if you listen, man and woman. New Ween album, dudes. It's boss as shit. Obviously not as good as Strawberry Jam or whatever supposedly "subversive" bullshit the kids are digging.

This album is not like that other album I heard! There are SONGS here. Lots of 'em. Slightly over an hour of SONGS is what this album is. Maybe Green Blues had songs and I didn't notice them because I was asleep. This new album sounds like Neil Young. Neil Young and his rock band Crazy Horse. Don't pretend that it doesn't. Listen to that fucking guitar tone on "Mama My," holy shit. Who cares if it's "derivative," that cunt pummelin' Crazy Horse sound is as perfect as rock 'n roll gets. Why try to even deny that. My god. My fucking god.

There are two types of songs on here: the spacey acoustic songs that don't have drums, and the balls-out rockers that do have drums. And the drums are totally kickass. DID YOU KNOW that the drummer on here is J. MASCIS, well, I just heard that today. I believe it. These drums... they're heavy. They sound great. The whole thing sounds really good, yep. 'Twas obviously recorded to tape, all analog-like. And it totally sounds like a log cabin in the woods or something. You can taste the tree bark and bushy marijuana beard real good, yep.

So, yeah, the rockers. Either they're complete shit-stompers like "Don't Cry No Tears" or creepy thunderclouds drifting overhead like "Danger Bird." Jesus christ, Zuma is the Greatest Album Ever Recorded, right? Why did I just say that, I don't believe it for one second, save for the ones during which I think about just how fucking good Zuma is. That's it, I'm turning this new-fangled G.G. Allin with Paul Rodgers pile 'o 200+ kbps VBR mp3 files off... that's right, I'm listening to "Danger Bird" right now. This fucking song. Neil Young is as good as Paul McCartney. Not really as good as the Killers featuring Lou Reed, mind you. It's not like Neil Young and Paul McCartney were ever in the BEATLES, ha.

Anyways, the acoustic songs are good, too. "I Get Caves In There." Beautiful song. Check it out. Pretty sure that there are one or two totally all-out epic acoustic droners on here. There's that one near the end, I know that. They're great, of course, but I'm not so into them as I am into shit like tracks three and four and two and thirteen and a bunch of the other solid jamz.

A lot of people are saying "Neil Young and Royal Trux" when talking about this bad boy of an album. And they're right! Forget about the Stones and shooting up all the live long day and apply that sloppy rock 'n troll Trux aesthetic to the music of Judy & The Dream of Horses, and you, my friend, have some great fucking music. The two vocalizers on here are charmingly rough around the edges, but it all works. These folks are concerned with being long-hairs and smoking their minds up into the cosmos, and sometimes that results in some massively outward flowing shit, all psychedelic like. Wilco, this is not. The Magnolia Electric Co., this is ALSO not. Hell, I'm sick of that shit! Molina has been doing the same crap over and over. It was awesome the first time. Now it's just so TAME and played-out... give me MV & EE any day of the week. They have balls. And a vagina.

Rating: Fucking great record. Seriously, one of the best things you could possibly put in your ears this year. These fuckers have it. Beautiful production. Killer tunes. The will to make music that's exciting and inviting. Maybe you're annoyed with all the bearded forest dwellers of "indie" these days. As you should be. But Beck's Midnite Vultures and his lovely wife Ekkehard Ehlers are doing something that comes across as very genuine and fun. What's that totally kickass Unwound chord change in "Susquehanna"? And the guy just said, "This one's for Mike Watt" in "Coaled Out." Son of a martyr! Son of a father! You can look inside you? You can look inside ME!

HEY!!!! BUY THIS ALBUM!!!!!!!! I'm listening to "Pardon My Heart" from Zuma. MV is to Neil Young as Neil Patrick "Julie" Haggerty is to McJagger? I'd say so, yeah. Listen to this album, you will understand.

Song: "Mama My"... one of the best things you'll hear all year!