Full disclosure: I have never liked hockey. Maybe it’s because I grew up in upstate New York, where hockey was rammed down every boy’s throat like a puck made of broken teeth and bruises. And yeah, okay, I was forced to play in the Squirt and Pee Wee leagues, and I sucked. So that may have something to do with it.

But The Zambonis are almost great enough to make me a hockey fan. Almost.

Started way back in 1991 in Connecticut (R.I.P., Whalers), The Zambonis are the world’s only hockey-themed rock band. Now you might think this is a somewhat limited genre to work within, and frankly, you’d be right. But somehow, against all odds, these dudes are getting ready to release their sixth—sixth!—album, Five Minute Major (In D Minor), on Feb. 14th. Just in time for Valentine’s Day! Because nothing says romance better than songs like “I Got a Concussion (When I Fell for You).”

The Zambonis have built up a pretty decent following among puckheads over the years. They’ve played the NHL All-Star Game twice, written a theme song for the Boston Bruins (“To Bleed Black and Gold”) and even got their song “Hockey Monkey” used as the theme music for The Loop, a short-lived Fox sitcom. The illustrious Jonathan Richman once called them “a beach party on ice.” We like to think of them more as Weezer with mouthguards. They don’t take themselves or their music too seriously (how could they, really?), but most of it is catchy as all get-out.

Side note: Founding Zamboni Dave Schneider is something of a specialist in the art of Extremely Specific Rock Bands. He’s also the co-creator (with Adam Gardner of Guster) of The LeeVees, a band that only writes songs about Hanukkah. And no, it’s not actually all that weird to be both Jewish and into hockey.

Second side note: Believe it or not, the makers of the Zamboni® ice resurfacers actually sent a cease and desist to The Zambonis in 1998. After some legal wrangling, Zamboni® finally let The Zambonis license the name—and, we sincerely hope, granted their wish and finally let them drive an actual Zamboni.

Now, if you’re not already sick of all this hockey talk, why don’t you watch The Zambonis’ latest video, “I’m a Puck.” It’s got a cool sort of NRBQ/Brian Setzer/rockabilly vibe that we’re digging. Maybe it’s…puckabilly? (Ouch. Feel free to cross-check me into the boards for that one.)

Links:

• The Zambonis official site
• The Zambonis on MySpace
• The Zambonis on Facebook

Hi, kids. Jake here, finally delivering y’all a playlist with some balls. Also, some power tools, Tuvan throat singing and field recordings of surgical procedures. That’s how I roll.

ShareMyPlaylists is thwarting me and not recognizing half these tracks, so here’s a direct link to the full playlist on Spotify. You’ll get 20 whole tracks of skull-crushing, ear-diddling insanity:

1. Lightning Bolt, “Assassins”
2. Fantomas, “Page 28″
3. Deerhoof, “The Great Car Tomb”
4. The Locust, “Who Wants a Dose of the Clap?”
5. Nimrod, “Ripsnort”
6. Arrington de Dionyso, “Susu Naga”
7. The Residents, “Smelly Tongues”
8. Captain Beefheart, “Skeleton Makes Good”
9. White Mice, “Passsthefissst”
10. Kylie Minoise, “Corpse Sex Show Outrage!”
11. Genocide Organ, “Genocide”
12. Iwrestledabearonce, “Alaskan Flounder Basket”
13. Yip-Yip, “California Fart”
14. Justice Yeldham, “300104 Hamburg”
15. Einsturzende Neubauten, “Negativ Nein”
16. Cabaret Voltaire, “News From Nowhere”
17. Cattle Decapitation, “Gestation of Smegma”
18. Goatwhore, “Sacrament of Emptiness and Despair”
19. Otto Von Schirach, “Septic Sewer Soup”
20. Matmos, “L.A.S.I.K.”

Management not responsible for lost or damaged hearing. Happy listening!

Now here’s a sentence you probably never thought you’d read: Die Antwoord will be joining Giants quarterback Eli Manning as the guests tonight (Monday, Feb. 6th) on The Late Show with David Letterman. Set your TiVos, you fokken chommies.

In other zef rap-rave news: Ten$ion, the second album from Ninja, Yo-Landi and DJ Hi-Tek, arrives this week in all fine record shops and e-tailers. You can stream the whole thing here, but play nice and buy that shit, because Die Antwoord turned down a million bucks from Interscope Records so they could go indie and release the weird-ass record we were all hoping for.

They’ve also got some U.S. tour dates. We’ll see you out at that LA show gettin freeky.

02.09.12 – Philadelphia, PA – Trocadero Theatre
02.10.12 – Boston, MA – Paradise Rock Club
02.11.12 – New York, NY – Irving Plaza
02.12.12 – Washington D.C. – 930 Club
02.14.12 – Toronto, ON – The Phoenix Concert Theatre
02.15.12 – Chicago, IL – Metro
02.18.12 – Portland, OR – Roseland Theater
02.19.12 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – The Regency Ballroom
02.20.12 – Seattle, WA – Showbox at the Market
02.22.12 – San Francisco, CA – Regency Ballroom
02.24.12 – Los Angeles, CA – Club Nokia
02.25.12 – Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues

*We’ve since learned that Die Antwoord apparently plan to release Ten$ion only digitally and on Flash drives because, in their words, “CDs are like motherfucking VHS.” Truth! Lies! You can buy the motherfucking CD version here.

Update: The video from their epic, unsettling performance is now live. “There’s your Super Bowl halftime show!”

Our favorite New Orleans weirdos, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, are bringing their patented blend of puppet show and electro-swamp-rock revue to a few lucky cities this spring (though not, we’re sad to see, L.A.–what do you have against the West Coast, guys?). You can also party on a boat with them if you act fast and score some last-minute tix to the Bruise Cruise, a floating rock festival setting out from Miami to the Bahamas Feb. 10-13. Also on that bill: Fucked Up, King Khan, Thee Oh Sees, the Dirtbombs and Jello Biafra. If you’ve never had the pleasure of puking into the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, well, now’s your chance.

Q & Ms. P have also been nominated for a Grammy! Kinda! The album Grand Isle by Cajun stars Steve Riley and the Mamadou Playboys features a cover of the Quintron and Miss Pussycat tune “Chatterbox,” with Quintron guesting on organ. And it’s been nominated in the Best Regional Roots Music category. Congrats, guys!

Quintron and Miss Pussycat U.S. tour dates:

02-07 St. Augustine, FL – Nobby’s Tavern
02-08 Miami, FL- The Stage
02-10 Miami, FL – Bruise Cruise
4-20 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
4-21 Athens, GA – Farm 255
4-23 Savannah, GA – The Jinx
4-24 Columbia, SC -  5 Points Pub [Indie Grits Festival]
4-25 Raleigh, NC – Kings Barcade
4-26 Washington, DC – Red Palace
4-27 Baltimore, MD – Golden West
4-28 Brooklyn, NY – 285 Kent
4-29 New York, NY – Mercury Lounge
4-30  Philadelphia, PA – Kung Fu Necktie
5-2 Allston, Ma – Great Scott
5-4 Portland, ME -  Geno’s Rock Club
5-5 Bennington, VT – Bennington College [Sunfest]
5-6 Montreal, QC – Il Motore
5-8 Toronto, ON- Silver Dollar
5-10 Detroit, MI -  Lager House
5-11 Cleveland, OH – Now That’s Class [Horrible Fest]
5-12 Chicago, IL – Empty Bottle
5-13 Milwaukee, WI – Cactus Club
5-15 Des Moines, IA – Vaudeville Mews
5-16 Omaha, NE – The Waiting Room
5-18 St. Louis, MO – Firebird

We’ll leave you with the video for “Face Down in the Gutter” off Quintron and Miss Pussycat’s latest album, Sucre Du Sauvage. Never has getting shit-faced looked so adorable.

(Photo by Sarah Sitkin)

Today’s weird artiste has been suggested to us by several folks over the years, most recently a reader named voodoojuice (not his real name, we assume…otherwise, he probably has to repeat it several times at parties). He’s a breakcore artist from Miami named Otto von Schirach, and even in a genre of music that’s pretty much all lunatics, he stands out as being extra wackadoodle.

Before we talk about Otto and his mythological origins, let’s back up a sec and talk about breakcore. A mid-’90s offshoot of hardcore techno and “IDM” (aka “intelligent dance music”…one of those genre names so obnoxious, I can only type it in quotation marks), breakcore basically lays an unholy mishmash of distorted kick drums and snare hits, gangsta rap and horror movie samples, dive-bombing bass lines and death growl vocals over breakbeats that have been chopped up and sped up to the point where the only logical way to dance to them is to fake an epileptic seizure. It’s not for the faint-hearted.

You can get a peek at several breakcore artists in action–including Von Schirach–in this excellent video, which was apparently done for some German television show. It’s mostly in German, but you don’t really need to understand what anyone’s saying to figure out that these breakcore producers and their fans are fucking nuts.

So, back to Otto von Schirach. According to his official bio, Von Schirach was born in 1978 in Miami or possibly dropped off by aliens and introduced into a Cuban/German family that included santeria practictioners and possibly wolves. He acquired his first drum machine in either 1991 or 1995, possibly from a neighborhood crackhead. Soon thereafter, he began making beats, which were decidedly breakcore-esque but slowed-down and strongly influenced by Miami booty bass, goregrind and IDM O.G.’s like Aphex Twin.

Von Schirach’s first big “break” (breakcore pun!) came when he got to open for the industrial band Skinny Puppy in 2003. According to one bio, “He scared the living shit out of all the Skinny Puppy fans night after night with his 35 minute, 3 costume change, ear punishing dance party.” That might sound far-fetched, but we’ve met a few Skinny Puppy fans and underneath all the black clothing and piercings, they’re a pretty skittish bunch. So it’s quite possible that Otto’s unique “spin” (DJ pun!) on breakcore really did freak them out.

That spin, as heard on albums with fantastic titles like Global Speaker Fisting and Oozing Bass Spasms, combines elements of (and again, we’re just quoting from the official bio here) “Electro Bass Noise, Gore Grind, IDM Glitch, Calliope, Breakcore Gabber Jungle, Gangsta Rap.” And as if all that weren’t enough to blow your mind, he’s also been known to perform in a superhero costume. We foresee a future Sir Ivan collaboration.

P.S. The track in the clip below is called “Teabagging the Dead.” Awesome.

Links:

• Otto von Schirach official site
• Otto von Schirach on MySpace
• Otto von Schirach on Facebook
• Otto von Schirach on Ipecac Recordings (Mike Patton’s label)

After spending much of the past year opening for bands named after classic American novels (Of Mice and Men, As I Lay Dying…maybe next they could open for The Dangerous Summer?), it’s about time those crazy kids in Iwrestledabearonce finally had some headlining shows of their own. So here they are! It’s the official IWABO “Road to Metal Fest” tour, coming soon to a landlocked city near you:

“Road To Metal Fest” Tour
4/16 – Oklahoma City, OK @ Conservatory
4/17 – Memphis, TN @ New Daisy Theater
4/18 – Knoxville, TN @ Valarium
4/20 – Springfield, VA @ Empire
4/21 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium – New England Metal and Hardcore Festival
4/23 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Altar Bar
4/24 – Evansville, IN @ Boney Junes
4/25 – Bloomington, IL @ The Castle Theater
4/26 – Des Moines, IA @ Vaudeville Mews
4/27 – Iowa City, IA @ Blue Moose
4/29 – Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre
4/30 – Albuquerque, NM @ Launchpad
5/01 – Flagstaff, AZ @ Cinnabar

We’ll play this post out with the video for “You Know That Ain’t Them Dogs’ Real Voices” off IWABO’s latest album, Ruining It for Everybody, available now online and wherever they still sell CDs that don’t suck. Best. Children’s. Party. Ever.

What’s up, weirdos? Sorry I’ve been letting Andy hog the site lately with his weak-ass indie pop hipster shit. I promise we will tilt the balance back in favor of punk, noise and metal in the weeks ahead. (Organic veggie instruments, dude? Really? But I digress.)

This week’s band was suggested by a reader named Kurtis, who reminded us that there’s more to Japan than Lady Gaga wannabes wearing headdresses made out of popcorn. Japan has also produced its fair share of pretty extreme and seriously awesome metal over the years, and Dir En Grey is about as extreme and awesome as it gets.

Dir En Grey have been around since the late ’90s and changed both their look and their sound several times over the years (Japanese bands seem to get bored with staying in one genre for too long–see also, ironically, Boredoms). They started out as a “visual kei” band, which basically meant hard rock with lots of elaborate costumes, crazy visuals and music videos that were a mix of anime, goth and cyberpunk. They’ve since toned down their image a bit (hence the biker gang look seen above, circa 2007), but their music has, if anything, gotten weirder. Their latest album, Dum Spiro Spero, kind of sounds like Tool meets My Chemical Romance meets Queensryche meets Napalm Death: alt-metal, screamo, grindcore and prog rock all fighting it out like superheroes in a Japanese action comic, with lead singer Kyo’s crazy vocals (dude can death-growl with the best of them, then unleash an operatic falsetto close to Mike Patton’s) leading the way.

But where Dir En Grey’s weirdness really shines is in their videos, some of which are disturbing enough to make Rob Zombie sleep with the light on. You know how the original Ring was 10 times scarier than pretty much any American horror movie ever? Well, your average Dir En Grey clip makes Marilyn Manson look like Mr. Rogers. Warning: You may need to increase your Xanax dosage after viewing this.

Links:

• Dir En Grey official site (English)
• Dir En Grey on MySpace
• Dir En Grey on Facebook

In 1968, Frank Zappa decided to launch his own record labels, Bizarre and Straight, to release not only the music of his band, the Mothers of Invention (and yeah, someday we’ll get around to officially adding them to the Weird A-Z List), but also some of the crazy music he was hearing around L.A. in those heady days of Free Love and plentiful psychedelics: records by TWBITW mainstays like Captain Beefheart and Wild Man Fischer as well as less celebrated but still pretty strange acts like The GTO’s, a band made up entirely of groupies. They also put out records by Alice Cooper, Lenny Bruce and Tim Buckley, among many others.

Now a new film is coming out Feb. 21 that revisits the Bizarre and Straight legacies. From Straight to Bizarre:  Zappa, Beefheart, Alice Cooper and LA’s Lunatic Fringe features archival footage and interviews with former GTO member Pamela Des Barres, Beefheart sideman John French, and some of the other folks involved in Bizarre and Straight’s brief existences (both labels folded in 1973). We haven’t seen it yet, so we can’t whole-heartedly recommend it, but we’re really hoping it’s more interesting than the first minute or so of this trailer (be patient, it does eventually get good):

You can pre-order From Straight to Bizarre on DVD from SeeOfSound.com. No word yet on whether it’ll be available via Netflix or iTunes or any of the other usual sources, but we’re betting it’ll pop up somewhere on basic cable (the Documentary Channel? VH1?) soon enough.

Anticipation really seems to be building for the debut album from Zammuto, the new band/solo project from Nick Zammuto, one-half of sound collage mavericks The Books. Just today, Pitchfork gave a “Best New Track” shout-out to “F U C-3PO,” an almost proggy jam with robot vocals and distortion pedals set to stun. And last week, director Matthew Day debuted a short documentary called “A Day With Nick Zammuto” that shows the musician hard at work on his new music and chilling in his amazing self-built house with his wife and ridiculously cute children. We’ve embedded the YouTube version of the film below, or you can watch the original on Day’s website, Naked Musicians.

Zammuto will be making their live debut on Feb. 3 at Mass Moca in North Adams, Massachusetts. If anyone goes, give us a report!

Good news, all you weirdo Frisco dwellers (and yes, we know you hate it when people say “Frisco”–that’s why we keep doing it): There are still some badges left for the 20th annual Noise Pop Festival that will get you into Bimbo’s 365 Club on Feb. 21st to see the Flaming Lips perform their 1999 classic album The Soft Bulletin in its entirety. And while not quite as weird as a 24-hour song encased in a human skull, The Soft Bulletin is an undisputed psych-rock masterpiece that should make for a pretty fascinating live listening experience. Even those stingy bastards at Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10.0 rating.

For those of you not familiar with Noise Pop: It’s sort of San Francisco’s version of the much more crowded and over-commercialized South by Southwest, a festival that’s spread out into venues all over the city instead of some dusty park with overpriced food vendors. Now in its 20th year, the 2012 edition of Noise Pop also features TWBITW favorites Die Antwoord along with such less weird but undeniably awesome acts as Sleigh Bells, Built to Spill, Atlas Sound, Matthew Dear and Archers of Loaf. Last we checked, $200 badges are still available that will get you into the entire festival, including the Lips. The whole thing lasts Feb. 21-26. If you decide to skip the Lips, the whole thing will only set you back $150–but why would you want to do that?

Jake and I will most likely not be there, sadly, because we’re broke as fuck. Unless we can convince them to let us in free and “report” on the whole thing. Isn’t that what all the other music blogs do?

We’ll play this post out with “Waitin’ for a Superman,” one of our favorite Soft Bulletin tracks. It’s gettin’ heavy!