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If every song Heavy Times played sounded like “Coffin Dirge,” the troupe wouldn’t be any better known, but it would be notable as one of the creepier acts out there. Taking the almost-instrumental track as the band’s pinnacle is completely anathema to growth. But over Heavy Times’ few releases, as it simultaneously draws influence from first wave punk acts and the contemporary garage scene, no single approach has suited the band in totality. During straight punk bangers, hearing Reader contributor Luca Cimarusti pound out frustration on the drum set, it’s clear he picked up sticks to play at a certain BPM. Read the rest of this entry »

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In three years Disappears has gone from a random assemblage of dudes who once performed with other bands to a group dispensing its own particular mélange of psych and pop run through garage’s sonic lens. Issuing two singles and a pair of full-lengths, the quartet hasn’t been developing at a rapid pace, but it still turns in concise rock songs, sporadically opting for fifteen-minute explorations of just a few notes. Adding in Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley behind the drum kit hasn’t hurt the band. Read the rest of this entry »

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The Spits’ decade-old career based on the angriest pop melodies possible is a remarkable thing. Throwing out three-chords in endless succession with only the slightest variation sounds, in theory, like a very troubling thing. But with the Wood brothers snarling hate-fuck lyrics, each song takes on a visceral nastiness absent from just about every other punk band kicking around on the planet. Issuing its fifth self-titled long-player this year, also referred to as “V,” the band seems to retain its ability to gussy up simplicity and truck it out simply for the fun of dispensing downer rock tracks—“My Life Sucks” is followed quickly by a track called “I’m Scum.” Read the rest of this entry »

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Four full-length albums into its career, Athens, Ohio’s Skeletonwitch can’t have too much new musical landscape to traverse after plundering metal’s previous eras pretty thoroughly. Of course, hailing from a town where it’s just as likely to be heckled by a yokel while walking down the street as it is to see a hilljack buy dope off a college hippie should provide at least a bit of inspiration. Skeletonwitch’s purview, though, isn’t the earthly realm; it’s some evil cartoon hellscape littered with doomed souls, misbehaving heathens and people being put upon by evil. Read the rest of this entry »

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There’s no way to extricate Mickey Hart from the Grateful Dead’s legacy. He was one of a pair of drummers—the other half was Bill Kreutzmann—making instrumental excess so easy for the ensemble. With Jerry Garcia’s penchant for Americana made evident through countless recordings on albums with folks like mandolin player David Grisman, Hart’s interests outside the Dead focused on roots music of another kind. Exploring a history of percussion reaching back much further than recorded sound, Hart set about not just incorporating those styles into his own work as portions of the 1972 “Rolling Thunder” express, but by performing compositions worked up in association with performers like Zakir Hussain. Read the rest of this entry »

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Continuing in the tradition of immaculately named stoner metal bands like Weedeater, High on Fire and Bongzilla, Chicago’s Bongripper has been dispensing heavy-handed instrumentals for more than six years at this point. Despite an ill-fated, cancelled tour earlier this year, the quartet’s lined up a jaunt to Europe, as any good metal band should, next spring. Kicking around locally so persistently, though, has enabled Bongripper to develop its approach to music in a methodical manner matched only by the slowly unfolding compositions it performs. Read the rest of this entry »

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When Bill Wyman left the Rolling Stones in 1992, fans of the septuagenarian bassist thought he would simply retire and concentrate on Sticky Fingers, his United States-themed cafe (according to Keith Richards’ best-selling autobiography) and his signature metal detector. However, nothing could be further from the truth. He has kept quite busy with his Rhythm Kings, a band he founded in 1998 with longtime musical partner Terry Taylor. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Perou

By Arvo Zylo

The first thing to know about lead musician Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is that s/he (the preferred non-gender identification) is a combination of two people who address themselves as “we.” Breyer P-Orridge had a longstanding, fruitful and intimate relationship with a woman named Lady Jaye. In search of a way to consummate their love for each other and unsatisfied with simply saying “till death do us part,” they wanted to actually consume one another. And, in essence, they did. They went to plastic surgeons and exchanged each other’s skin, made each other’s cheekbones look alike, got breast implants for the same size cup, and so forth. Since Lady Jaye passed on from stomach cancer in 2007, Breyer P-Orridge considers h/erself an embodiment of both people, and to some extent, a connection to Lady Jaye’s place on the other side. Breyer P-Orridge and Lady Jaye called their project “Pandrogyne,” and part of the intent was to transcend the trappings of the body and to nullify the concept of gender. Some people consider themselves to be a man stuck inside of a woman’s body, or a woman stuck inside of a man’s body, but to Genesis, s/he is simply “stuck in a body.” It’s not transgender as much as it is post-gender. Read the rest of this entry »

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Without Fishbone, Sublime and No Doubt would have wound up being drug-addled SoCal footnotes. Whatever eventually became the American conception of ska music didn’t begin with Angelo Moore and Norwood, but their group’s all-inclusive approach to songwriting influenced a generation of weird bands. It’d actually be reasonably easy to round up Fishbone’s Jamaican-related efforts onto a single disc–the six-minute “Party at Ground Zero” being an epic accomplishment made even more stunning by the fact that the song was issued as a part of the band’s first EP back in 1985. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Chris Roque

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Hardcore’s a pretty personal music. Detailing tough times and political views, though, isn’t the totality of the form lyrically. So, it’s unsurprising that H2O would release an album comprised of compositions from a handful of decade-old groups that band members idolized in adolescence. H2O, which started kicking around during the mid-nineties, lays out a Bad Brains track to open “Don’t Forget Your Roots.” While eventually working in NYC bands like Madball, they are also conscious of including left coast acts like Social Distortion. Read the rest of this entry »