No Visible Scars

As my esteemed colleague, Judge Shredd, mentioned below, We are in the end times. You only have to look at the economic and environmental situations across the globe, the rampant crime and disease rates, mankind has run its course. Mother Nature isn't too happy anymore and Megaupload is gone. We are facing extinction.
During these bleak times you need bleak music to soundtrack those last few heartbeats and breaths escaping you as the world slows down.
No Visible Scars managed to gain my attention with the 1970's/80's Giallo/Exploitation/Porn inspired artwork and imagery, they're love of the timeless C-90 tape,  and the fact quite a few of the digital releases are free. Most Illcon followers should be able to relate to one of those. I decided to give a heads up on a few of the releases worth investigating.

Elders Of The Apocalypse - The Law Of Iron (2011)

Get it

Nasty and ragged, thrashy death metal by guys with nasty names such as Plague Bearer and Sadistik Slayer. I guess the term "war metal" suits this best. I can hear elements of Kreator and Sodom in there alongside some  Bestial Warlust black noise and a slew of suitably apocalyptic samples. Awesome cover art included.

Nightbitch - Sex And Magic promo (2010)

Get it

This is the one I have been digging the most. Comprising the smooth pipes of that dude from Hour Of 13 with some total NWOBHM riffing crossed with proto-Doom jams. THIS SHIT ROCKS. This was a 3-track promo for the EP of the same name. They don't seem to have much else available but they have connections to a whole host of other bands according to Encyclopedia Metallum.

Poison Tongue - Lick You Sweety (2010)

Get it

That cover seem pretty attractive doesn't it? Bit more left field this time. Poison Tongue is Giallo/Exploitation inspired noisescapes. Its not full on harsh noise ( though it gets plenty harsh in places) but more ambient and unsettling due to the schizophrenic changes in volume and pacing. Kind of like those quiet bits in between Goblin freak outs crossed with Beherit's noise tendencies.

There you go gang. They have the usual places online here and here. I'm digging this label a lot recently. You should to.

Pagan Altar - Volume 1 (1982)

I'm not entirely sure what to put here to be honest. This band simply rules. Pure, plain, and simple and if you think otherwise, I'm not sure what to tell you other than: "...that's a bloody shame!" As I sit here typing in between my Ecology class and Senior capstone class, I am actually wearing a Pagan Altar shirt. Yep, you heard me correct! I'm THAT much of a fan...

Normally I'd discuss the band in more depth, and I'd probably would disclose more detail on my introduction and experience with the band, but seeing as I only have a few spare minutes to type said post, and furthermore I still have yet to run to the restroom, then eat, and prepare for my next class of course - not to mention get to the damned class on time - I'm going to leave you with this:

This band rules. Period. This release, titled Volume 1, was Pagan Altar's first full length and recorded in 1982 but was not officially released until 1998. If you're a fan of doom metal, and further NWOBHM, you cannot go wrong with this release. Fans of Black Sabbath, Witchcraft, Candlemass, Angel Witch and Pentagram look no further!
This is truly a great listen and is recommended to all who are into heavy metal, doom, and rock. Again, this band rules.

Get it Here, Here,
or Here

Metallum / Last.FM

Official Website

Stallone soundtrack pump up/round up.

The joys and awesomeness of movie montage music have been extolled many a time here on Illcon. From the awesome Blood Bros mix-tapes to Cobra's in-house work out mix, we all know how hard they rule as well as the obvious mental and physical benefits that can be attained from listening to such down right manly, life affirming and brutally cool tunes.
Now, your probably wondering what all this is leading to? Well, as a sucker for soundtracks in general I routinely go through my collection and realised that out of everything I have, there is one actor who seems to have dominance over the rest of my OST shelf, that one man is Mr Sylvester Stallone.

On closer inspection I realised that he also seems to have the most relevance when it comes to pump up montages ( as well as more often than not having soundtracks that are far more entertaining than the actual films they correspond to). I mean, Rocky is the main culprit when it comes down to it. In fact, the first 4 Rocky films possess enough sweaty working out set to awesome rock music footage to power a small country. Eye of The Tiger, case in point. The ruling Kingpin of montage riffary. So in the Illcon spirit of educated the uneducated, I have pulled out my personal picks of the Stallone OST library for you good people to enjoy, kick back, work out and be cool to.

Various Artists - Rocky IV

Starting of with the undisputed king of pump up soundtracks, Rocky IV. The first Rocky film I ever saw also possesses the best of the series music. Of course Eye of The Tiger is here, but so is No Easy Way Out, Sweetest Victory and Hearts On Fire. Not to mention Vince Dicola's two instrumental ass-kickers. Pure montage fury. I'm also pretty sure the film has more montages per reel than any other film.

If he dies, he die.

Various Artists - Over The Top

I don't think anyone knew where Stallone was going with this film, I am pretty sure he didn't either but he made damn sure the soundtrack was solid. Ignore the stinkers from his brother Frank and the limp effort by Kenny Loggins, just focus on Sammy Hagar's timeless Winner Takes It All. Asia's Gypsy Soul, Larry Greene's Take It Higher and Giorgio Moroder's instrumental The Fight. Need a soundtrack for your next Tuesday arm wrestling meet up? Here you go.

Weiner takes it all.

Harold Faltermeyer - Tango & Cash

Can a buddy cop movie go wrong? Even with Kurt Russell involved? I am afraid so. Case in point, Tango & Cash. Despite a pretty okay chemistry between the Kurtster and Stallone, Robert Z'dar swinging his giant chin around and some pretty sweet cowboy boots with a gun hidden in the heel, this was a surprisingly lumpen affair. The same can't be said of the classy score courtesy of the main man Harold Faltermeyer though. Combining the upbeat, streetwise sounds of his Beverly Hills Cop score alongside the more brooding work he cultivated on The Running Man, Mr Faltermeyer pulls another winner out the bag.

 Rambo? Rambo's a pussy.

Various Artists - Cobra

Believe it or not, this was originally what Beverly Hills Cop was going to be like. After being pushed off the project, Stallone vowed he would make the film he intended. The result was Cobra. Awesome for being so lame on so many levels. The soundtrack is worthwhile for Jean Beauvoir;s Feel The Heat, Gary Wright's lost classic Hold On To Your Vision and the instrumental efforts by Sylvester Levay. Perfect music to soundtrack some rogue policing.

This is where the law stops and I start - sucker!

Keith Emerson - Nighthawks

You decide to make a movie about Billy Dee Williams and Stallone chasing a crazed, European bomber as he blows up innocent people. Who would you get to soundtrack it? How about organ destroying, keyboard pioneer Keith Emerson? Superb idea. Emerson crafted a pretty solid score with this one. In a very similar way to Lalo Schiffrin approaching his work on Dirty Harry from a jazz background, Emerson approached Nighthawks with a head full of prog keyboard noodling and worked unhindered until it was complete.

There is no security

All this awesomeness has made me wonder when the montage actually came into use? I remember Rocky from being a kid but did such a thing exist in the 60's or 70's?

Don't say we never give you nuthin'

Not content with finishing off my Eno series with style, verve, moxie, chutzpah and aplomb, I have also taken it upon myself to give you good good people a couple of small christmas gifts. Call it a token of our esteem from us here at the IllCon compound for it is, after all, the season of goodwill and so forth.




















I did sneakily foreshadow this post in my last one, mentioning, as I did,'writing bollocks about massively overlooked bands from New Zealand' and my enthusiasm for the TV cartoon 'Adventure Time WIth Finn & Jake', so that may well give you a clue as to at least some of the content herein.




















So, my first gift here- just a small one really - is an alternate version of the theme tune to 'Adventure Time'. I find the main theme to be the weakest thing about the show - far too indie and twee for my sensitive ears - so coming across this version that borders on Fancy Metal was pretty darned algebraic for me...



Now, I'm sure there'll be the usual naysayers out there slinging the 'H' word around and blah blah blah, but to those people I say 'SHUT THE FUCK UP'. You soulless cunts, you probably don't like the goddamn Muppets either, and I don't fucking trust people who don't like the goddamn Muppets.


















...aaaaaand relax.

My main present is something that I'm pretty damn sure isn't currently to be found anywhere else on t'internet. That's right people, we got us an EXCLUSIVE. First, though, I gotta ask, does the name 'Shihad' mean anything to anyone?




















If your answer is 'yes', then you probably already know just how damn good their first few records were and you may well already have a copy of the recording(s) that I'm about post.
However, if your answer is a no then I think you're in for a treat. Here's a wee taster to whet your whistle...



Pretty damn rockin' huh? Kinda 'Helmet-y' y'think? Hell, have another...



Yup. I dig 'em.

Both tracks come from 'Killjoy', Shihad's second LP, which was released back in 1995 and is one of my all-time favourite records.
Their debut EP 'Devolve' and their first LP, and first international release, 'Churn' (produced by Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman, fact fans!) were pretty decent, but 'Killjoy' is just a BEAST. Blessed with a rhythm section that pumps like the engine on an exceptionally fine ship-of-the-line and some right noisy guitars, 'Killjoy' totally rocks my world. Hell, those guitars that crash back in at 3.24 during 'Bitter' sound less like guitars and more like heavy steel cables lashing against one another. KILLER.

I was lucky enough to see them live on their European tour in support of 'Killjoy'- although not, alas, in their Faith No More support slot - and can wholeheartedly say that they were a fucking fantastic live band too.




















As I said earlier, I haven't been able to find this posted ANYWHERE else on the internet, so consider yourselves very lucky boys and girls. I've even added the two B-sides from the 'You Again' CD Single - one of which is a cover of Bowie's 'Boys Keep Swinging' - AND the two Shihad tracks from their 'Happy Families' Split CD with fellow Kiwi lunatics Head Like A Hole. These are all from my own personal, deeply cherished, CDs so you'd damn well better appreciate 'em!


















Get 'Killjoy' by Shihad Here.



















Now, just before I leave you to slip further into your Turkey/Tofurkey-with-all-the-trimmings induced comas, I'd just like to add that Shihad still exist - their website can be found here - but they have done nothing of worth since their highly divisive 1996 self-titled LP, so if you decide to go digging around online after getting all fired up by 'Killjoy', don't say I didn't warn you.

Blue Öyster Cult - s/t (1972)

And you may be wondering to yourself why you should give this a chance. A reader of this fine blog, obviously worldly and well-schooled by their choice of internet diversion, probably thinks they know the score. But seriously, forget whatever associations you may have picked up over the years. Forget “Godzilla”. Forget the accrued distaste classic rock can leave in a young punk or metalhead in the middle of nowhere, when such things are deemed normative and your Morbid Angel or Dead Kennedys t-shirt is seen as an indicator of the worst sin imaginable: that of difference. And for fuck's sake, forget Christopher Walken and cowbells. Forget all these things and the genius of the first Blue Öyster Cult record can make its grandeur known to you (well, really any BÖC from the '70s is pretty killer, but the first one is heads and tails beyond any of 'em).

Consider:

• The use of umlauts in a band name – How many rock bands did this before BÖC? I can count on a closed fist. How many did it after? Couldn't count on all the fingers in the world.

• The band's name itself – taken from a poem by manager Sandy Pearlman referencing a group of aliens who secretly control Earth's affairs.

• The band's logo – taken from an alchemical symbol denoting lead (the heaviest of metals).

• The (unsubstantiated but hopefully true) rumor that, during the early '90s the band's popularity had plunged to the point where their show guarantee was $200. I've seen bands play living rooms and get paid more than that. Meaning, that at one point in time, it was conceivable that Blue Öyster Cult could have played your living room. They didn't. And probably wouldn't. But it's closer to the realm of possibility than with many comparable bands.

Alchemy? Aliens guiding mankind's destiny? Umlauts? I'm actually surprised this record hasn't gotten any coverage on Illcon before. Theirs is a weird shadow world, a world of Satanic biker gangs (“Transmaniacon MC”), of drug deals gone fatally wrong (“Then Came The Last Days Of May” - apparently based on the murder of three of singer Buck Dharma's friends [and let's consider that name for a minute – how many rock and roll frontmen had a name that was a play on words regarding the transcendence of several religions' concept of universal harmony and balance? It's fucking brilliant in a way that such showbiz rechristenings pretty much never are]), of the power of music as destroyer (“Cities On Flame With Rock And Roll”) and redeemer (“Redeemed”). And then along the way a few detours into bondage-inclined Canadian Mounties, astrological/alchemical musings, and what seems to be a paean to violent foot fetishism.

This.

It can be difficult to understand how to take this weird cross-pollination of ideas. It could be that they were simply trying to move past the initial era when rock and roll had to mean something (maaaaan), before the conceptual side of the music that had started so innocently bloated up into prog rock's worst excesses. But I like to think that there was a more unified vision at work, a manifestation of the dark turn that the era of peace and love had taken by 1972. Perhaps not exactly a literal representation (though much of the drug-related material seems to have had some basis in the tangible world) but an extrapolated vision of star-crossed losers, the ones who had cast their lot with the aspiring world-changers and had come up radically short. It's an almost Pynchonian narrative, a nebulous cluster of ideas in which connecting lines are not drawn for the listener, one that might seem like a forced, inchoate melange of weird-for-weird's-sake iconography if it weren't for the fact that it's treated with some degree of gravity.

Not this. Never this.

While BÖC was intended to be the American Black Sabbath, rarely did their debut album indulge in that kind of heaviness (“Cities On Flame...” is about as close as it comes). Instead, the band showcases a musical versatility that their later albums lack. There are a few musical detours, some jaunty, syncopated lounge jazz rhythmic devices, some lead guitar work that almost sounds like it could've come from a Buck Owens song – but the real heaviness is a sort of slow and eerie atmosphere that sounds like the sonic equivalent of a lava lamp and a black light, Sabbathian only in the sense that it's not far removed from “Planet Caravan.”

So let the good name of Blue Öyster Cult be clearly understood. Scour the dollar bins for copies of this record (but don't pay more than five dollars, if you do you're almost as foolish as somebody who doesn't own the album at all). Let rock and roll raze our cities and let the messages of lust and derangement guide our puny lives as our alien overlords had so obviously intended.

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Blue Öyster Cult -s/t