The Saving Grace of 90's Hardcore... Atlas Shrugged's grossly overdue discog finally sees the light of day!!!

Those who have followed me on that other stupid blog I write/wrote will know that I have

been no friend to the Hardcore scene since around '06 or so. In fact, in many ways, the overwhelming bulk of the bits from Tales Of Perversion Fanzine reduced the Hardcore scene to nothing more than the butt, nay, the bleeding rectum of my most juvenile of jokes. Being that my reasons abound for such satirical sodomy, whether justifiable or not, the weird irony in my antagonism of the Hardcore scene is that I was once a fanatical member of it.
Um, yeah... I was pretty pathetic. I was an inch or two shorter, 100 pounds heavier, virginal, a face like a topographic map, and with a neck-load of Hare Krishna Tulasi beads that would make a South African tribeswoman turn green with envy. I mean, Ray Cappo took one look at me at an early South Florida SHELTER show and he said, "Prabhupada Schmabhupada, you are my new guru"... and then he blew me... Just kidding...
Who could possibly have been able to convince me that later in life I would exchange those Krishna beads for a neck-load of Santeria beads, kind of like Umfufu over here to the right. A prevalent theme of my life, it seems like I have always had a need for dogma to tie itself around my neck... Whoa, deep segue... Sorry!

Thank the deities for the horribly overlooked Atlas Shrugged, the only worthwhile take-away from that oh-so kooky decade. What this band did throughout its run was so special, so compelling; and yet I can't help but feel that they fell to the wayside while some very generic sounding bands took the lion's share of the props. 

As is the fate of any so-called "Post-Hardcore" band, AS was steadily compared to bands like Burn and Absolution, ad nauseam. Atlas Shrugged is clearly influenced by both of the aforementioned, but in many respects I think they surpassed both of their 'mentors' as far as songwriting is concerned. Sure, some of the formulaic principles of Burn and their ilk are present, but Atlas Shrugged's approach was younger, packed to the brim with emotion, having not yet been jaded by early adulthood. And by the way, what the fuck is "Post Hardcore" anyway? What an eloquent way to categorize Hardcore bands that can actually throw together a song using skill and feeling, and not just noise and bravado.  

Their debut The Last Season on vocalist Chris Weinblad's label Trip Machine Laboratories was a stroke of Post Hardcore genius- not too bold a statement considering the age of these musicians at the time of recording (they must have been 18 or so). From that very first needle-drop on The Last Season, I was sent into a fist-swinging, roundhouse kick fury in my bedroom, hoping that I would someday be able to perform my completely choreographed Hardcore dance moves at an AS show... That day would never come -my carefully edited dance moves would go to waste, a shame judging from how cool they looked in my bedroom mirror.

It was all about the execution with these guys. Their songs were bursting at the seams with the palpable rage of disenfranchised youth, when there was such a thing! The punch that AS packed was just undeniable, creating music that went straight through the chest, reverberating in the very melancholy that lurked beneath the superficial anger of any kid who turned to Hardcore music for some kind of spiritual solace. Just take a listen at what's doing in one of my AS standout faves "Another Season", particularly that amazing riff during the bridge at about a minute and thirty seconds into this little ditty; if that passage doesn't invoke some kind of sorrow-masked-as-rage in your heart of hearts then you're probably one of the living undead. It's tracks like this that really give you a feel for their moderately technical yet forceful emotional Hardcore.

"Darkness" is another goosebump-inducing number included in this discog', taken off of their We Don't Stand a Chance 7" single. This frenetic free-fall into the depths of despair from a love lost (or non-reciprocated) is just so extraordinarily beautiful underneath its deafening choler. It made me hate them for a brief moment, in the same way as Salieri hated Mozart for composing masterful sonic art that he would never be able to conceive.    

This 19 song discography mashes up all of their various seven inches along with The Last Season LP in what seems to be their final "ride off into the sunset". Some of those who would be interested in this collection probably already have all of this stuff on vinyl, but for those who have sworn off of that hipster, record-collecting crap for good, this CD hits the spot. The sound seems to have been cleaned up a bit -just a tad- which makes for better enjoyment of the arpeggio guitar work of the superbly talented Calimbas brothers, as well as the melodious, jazz-like chops of bassist John Focht.     

 Some may argue that Chris Weinblad's vocals are an acquired taste. Nigga, please! What, are you going to tell me that Ray Cappo was Pavarotti, or that Lifetime fuck-tard Ari Katz voice were any better?! I can compose a roll-call of whack singers from the 90s that were mover-shaker scenesters. But Weinblad's occasionally (mildly) nasal delivery is a small hurdle to overcome in lieu of his intensely passionate bursts. His bellowing scream contained such a palpable inner rage that to me it remains inconceivable that this band remained in the basement tier of the then subterranean Hardcore scene, a scene supposedly parched from thirst for bands who echoed this much inner rage in such an eloquent manner. 

There will never be another band like this, no matter how much trendier Hardcore becomes. If you were, at any point of your life, a Saucony wearing, roundhouse kicking, empty backpack toting Hardcore geek and would like to be reminded of exactly why it is that you vowed allegiance till death to the scene, then jump on that dumb distro site that all Hardcore geeks whack it to  and do yourself a major solid. You'll thank me later. In the meantime, I'll be jamming to "Tribes of Man" and executing a mock stage-dive from my dresser drawer to my bed. 

Spiral Shades "Hypnosis Sessions": The Doom joint of the year is a demo?

A short time after becoming a staff writer for the Belgian website doom-metal.com, I made a request to the sites editor-in-chief to indulge my predilections for bands from Asia, particularly India. For me, the idea of an Indian Doom/Stoner/Psychedelic Metal band seems a likely game-changer for Doom; closing up the loop of musical culture’s retro-active time-lines back to when the Beatles hooked up with the Maharishi and began dropping acid. Certainly, the climate of Doom Metal as a genre seems to be pointing to that era, having gone way past Black Sabbath mimicry and into mid-to-late 60's folk and psychedelia. What my e-Boss came up with was close enough in that one of two of Spiral Shades personnel was based in India; but musically it was better than my wildest dreams.

I made the vow that I was going to spare myself, and you the reader, all of the eloquence and verbosity that music reviewers acquire though the aid of Thesaurus.com. No, I was not going to puff this review up because there is just no need to. I'm the Lord High Executioner here, so no editor-in-chief can impose some draconian word count minimum upon this bush league blog. I opted to reduce to the lowest common denominator and sum this entire record up using classically vulgar American brevity… THIS THING FUCKING RULES!

Spiral Shades is the virtual music project of Norwegian guitarist/bassist Flip Petersen and vocalist/lyricist Khushal R. Bhadra by way of Mumbai, India. These two made acquaintance via commenting on the same Youtube videos of their favorite Doom Metal songs/bands. From this random cyber-crossing of the Tigris and Euphrates came the idea to do this long-distance project. Evidently, Petersen records guitar and bass tracks over inconceivably  programmed drums from Norway, to which Bhadra then records vocals over in India. If this sounds like a complicated, tedious process... that's because it is! Any one with even the slightest music-making experience will well imagine how difficult it must be to write music with this cut-and-paste method, let alone to make it sound natural like this record does.

Humbly touted as demo yet clocking in at just under an hour with a nine-song track list of solid material from front to back, Spiral Shades may be selling themselves short. In reality, this is a full-length sized exhibition of healthy traditional Doom-Metal Sabbath worship the likes of which have not been seen since Sleep’s Holy Mountain. In fact, there are moments in Hypnosis Sessions where you almost feel like you are listening to some lost Black Sabbath record that has never been disinterred and coming to discover that this lost Sabbath joint just happens to be the sickest thing they have ever done. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than Ozzy and his old mates must be blushing like Anime school girls...

The album opener “Frustration” is a rocking foreshadowing of the dark delights that await within this instant classic. From the grimy wailing guitar intro, horseback over a strutting bluesy swing, to the folky instrumental “Fading Sunlight” as their final bow, there isn’t a single piece of deadwood that should be cut off of this Trad-Doom masterpiece. This “Demo” is rising action from start to finish, never reaching a plateau nor relenting from its retro occult-rock vibe. Flip Petersen is a riff-machine, churning them out one after another while Bhadra’s vocals eerily invoke a young Ozzy's howl. As for the drumming, one could never be able to guess that they were generated through a computer program, sounding every bit as organic as a nicely worn, sparkling Ludwig 4 piece from the sixties.

Quite frankly, this is an instant classic that needs to be pressed on vinyl and released through a label so that it can be officially canonized as such. Rise Above, Southern Lord and the likes are probably 'going to the mattresses' over this... imaginably. Or will this masterpiece fall to the wayside as one of ‘the greatest albums never heard’?
 I shudder to think that this will be the case with Hypnosis Sessions. If you’ve heard this record, than it would be inconceivable to think that word-of-mouth won’t make Spiral Shades the next Stoner/Doom “It” band. Night, night, SLEEP. You had a good run as Stoner-Metal's mountain kings...

Check them out here!