Blog Archives
H-Beam
Despite our crusty, cynical exteriors, we’re really softies here at Weird Band HQ. So when a band loses one of our world-famous Weird Band Polls™ by just a few votes, it breaks our hearts. But not for very long, because we can just go ahead and add them to the Weird List anyway. You didn’t think that poll shit was binding, did you? This ain’t fuckin’ American Idol and I’m way better looking than that douchebag Ryan Seacrest.
So congratulations, H-Beam! You may have come in second to Barbara, but second place with over 500 freakin’ votes is still good enough in our book.
H-Beam are from Nashville, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say they are not gunning for a spot in the Country Music Hall of Fame. They’re more Dr. Demento than Grand Ole Opry. The brains of the operation seems to be a singer/guitarist/banana aficionado named (duh) Banana Matt. When he’s reeling off guitar-god psych-rock solos, they kinda just sound like another Bonnaroo side stage jam band. But Matt likes to write songs about talking hot dogs and masturbating pandas, and he’s surrounded himself quite the band of misfits: a magician/saxophonist, a dude who gives rides on his giant moustache, a lawyer pig named Bert DerHam, and a manager/hype-man named Mitch Huffman who wears a thrift-store pimp hat and says “Who touched all my shit?” a lot for no apparent reason. Even the masturbating panda shows up occasionally.
Banana Matt and company just released their third album this week: Episode 1: Shorn to Secrecy, a follow-up to the excellently titled Useful Box of Hair. It’s full of wacky skits and Zappa-like jams and it will make you smile. You can download the whole thing name-your-own-price-styley from Noisetrade. There’s an entire song about bacon, so you know that shit’s worth at least a fiver.
Now I will admit: 500 votes aside, half the reason H-Beam is scoring Weird Band of the Week honors is because they got Bert DerHam to make this awesome video giving us a shoutout. But the other half…maybe even the other two-thirds…is the video for “Love Panda.” Enjoy.
Links:
Weirdify Playlist 12: Whack Christmas
It’s been way too long since we did a new Weirdify playlist, but there’s no better occasion for getting into the back into the swing of things than Christmas. You either love holiday music or you hate it—and if you’re like us, your opinion on the subject probably swings wildly between those two extremes depending on what they’re playing while you’re picking up your Zoloft at CVS. (Please, baby Jesus, no more Mariah Carey.)
Fortunately, there are approximately five gazillion metric fuck-tons of holiday and Christmas-themed recordings to choose from, and many—most, even—don’t involve Grandmas getting run over by reindeers or old classics getting run over by the melisma of former American Idol contestants.
So with our patron saint, Frank Zappa*, as our guide, we dove into Spotify with all the shopping-cart-filling zeal of a Black Friday shopper at Wal-Mart to bring you our final Spotify mix of 2012: “Whack Christmas.” It’s what we’re dreaming of. Soon, it’s what you’ll be dreaming of, too. Especially when you get to “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey.” That shit is catchy!
Giddy up, giddy up, let’s go! (That’s Christmas-speak for, “Launch your Spotify player.” Or use the embedded player below. Cuz Spotify finally lets you do that now.)
*There’s no Frank Zappa on Spotify and, to the best of our knowledge, he never recorded any Christmas music. But if one of you Frank-ophiles out there cares to correct us, we’ll happily link to whatever Santa-related sonic mayhem he may have concocted.
Some notes on your listening experience:
1. Capital Kings, “Carol of the Bells.” You didn’t think we’d ease you into this mix gently, did you? Fuck no. You’re gonna start with a dubstep version of the most melodramatic Christmas carol of all time. When the bass drop hits, try crushing a carton of eggnog on your forehead. You’re feelin’ it now, bro!
2. Ronnie James Dio, Tommy Iommi, Rudy Sarzo, Simon Wright, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” This is from an album called We Wish You a Metal Xmas…and a Headbanging New Year! Need we say more? R.I.P., Holy Diver. (P.S. There might be another track from this album later in the mix. But you’ll just have to stick around to find out.)
3. Wesley Willis, “Merry Christmas.” I bet Wesley Willis gave great Christmas gifts. Or at least great Christmas head butts. We like this holiday a lot, too, Wesley!
4. Johnny MacRae, “Here Comes Fatty Claus.” You can find this on a delightful collection—sadly, not available on Spotify—called A John Waters Christmas. It kinda does for Christmas what Pink Flamingos did for overweight transvestites.
5. Randall Reed with the Forerunners, “The Peppermint Stick Man.” This unintentionally (we hope) child molestery Xmas original is from another worthy compilation called The American Song-Poem Christmas, a collection of amateur one-off singles recorded by would-be singer-songwriters and (we presume) very, very depressed session musicians. Here’s a tip for all you aspiring writers of children’s songs: Never use the word “erect” in a lyric.
6. Bob Dylan, “Here Comes Santa Claus.” Did you know Dylan released a Christmas album a few years back? It’s true. He also apparently smoked a carton of unfiltered Camels right before the recording sessions.
7. Afroman, “Police Blow My Wad.” This early ’00s novelty rapper took all the royalties from his one and only hit, “Because I Got High,” and blew them on a holiday album called A Colt 45 Christmas. And weed. Probably mostly on weed. This one is set to the tune of “Feliz Navidad”…get it? No? Smoke a bowl first and it’s hilarious. Trust us.
8. Elf-Elf and Dok-Im, “My Christmas Bells (Elf Vocal).” This might be Jake’s favorite rap song ever. Mashed potatoes!
9. The Jingle Punx, “It’s What I Got in My Sack.” Is there any better cure for too much shitty Christmas music than some good old-fashioned snot-punk? Also, he said “sack.” Heh-heh.
10. The Vandals, “I Don’t Believe in Santa Claus.” Next time someone asks you, “Hey, what’d you get me for Christmas?”…just play them this song. Unless you actually got them something. In that case…you know what? Play it anyway. ‘Cuz The Vandals rule.
11. Nerf Herder, “I’ve Got a Boner for Christmas.” Who needs “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” when we’ve got this romantic Yuletide ditty to keep us warm? Did you know “stocking” rhymes with “cock in”? Well, it doesn’t, really, but who cares? Let’s all get laid for Christmas!
12. Edmund Welles, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Think of this as a little post-punk palette cleanser, courtesy of our favorite all-bass clarinet ensemble. Not weird, per se, but gosh-darned purty.
13. Tiny Tim, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Another track from A John Waters Christmas, starring the world’s greatest ukulele-strumming, falsetto-voiced, late-night TV cult hero. This old Christmas chestnut takes on new life when it’s sung by someone who sounds like he’s gargling with angels’ tears.
14. British Summer Time Ends, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” As we point out frequently on this blog: The ’80s were a weird decade. This track appears on a random 1987 compilation called Joyeux Noel that features John Zorn and a bunch of other bands we’d never heard of, including these British Summer Time Ends guys. We tried Googling them for like two hours and all we could come up with was this. If anyone knows more about them, share, please! ‘Cause this version of “I Saw Mommy” is pretty great.
15. Lou Monte, “Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey.” This 1960 novelty song regularly shows up on “Worst Christmas Songs Ever” lists. Which we think is pretty unfair, actually. When shit like our next song is still in circulation…
16. Bobby Boris Pickett, “Monster’s Holiday.” To be fair, it must have sucked being Bobby Boris Pickett. That dude was doomed to forever rehash his one and only hit. Still, can you imagine if today’s acts released Christmas-themed cash grabs this shameless? Oh, wait, they do. Don’t worry, we won’t taint this mix with any of that Bieber shit. We’ve got a much cooler child pop star…
17. Gayla Peevey, “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.” Little Gayla Peevey was only 10 years old when she recorded this novelty hit in 1953. By 18, she was a Lindsay Lohan-like coke whore running over valets outside Hollywood’s sleaziest nightclubs. Kidding! Actually, she changed her name to Jamie Horton and released a song called “Robot Man.” Beat that, Miley Cyrus.
18. RuPaul, “Santa Baby.” A drag queen singing a seduction song to Jolly Saint Nick? Sure, why the hell not? Much like RuPaul’s Drag Race (seriously, how is that thing on its fifth season?), it wears out its welcome pretty quickly, but hey, that’s what the skip button is for.
19. The Superions, “Crummy Christmas Tree.” So long as we’re in camp mode, let’s throw in a track by B-52′s frontman Fred Schneider’s Xmas-themed side project. If that sad tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas specials could sing…it would sound exactly like Fred Schneider. Who knew?
20. The Avalanches, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” There’s a whole, massive subgenre of surf-rock/beach-themed Christmas music, most of which is, frankly, kinda lame. But this instrumental version of the date-rapiest of holiday standards is kinda groovy, isn’t it?
21. The Klezmonauts, “Joy to the World.” Hey, all you “War on Christmas” conspiracy theorists, I’m gonna let you in on a little secret: Most Jews actually love Christmas. Not the Jesusy, away-in-a-manger stuff so much. But Santa, the presents, the tree, the eggnog—they’re totally down. Neil Diamond didn’t record A Cherry Cherry Christmas because his Christian overlords at Columbia Records were holding a gun to his head. We’re sure the same holds true for The Klezmonauts, who recorded an entire album of klezmer-styled holiday standards under the obvious but genius title of Oy to the World. It’s like a delicious Hanukkah latke topped with figgy pudding instead of apple sauce.
22. Family Force 5, “Little Drummer Boy.” We interrupt this mix for a little Christian crunk rock. There’s actually an entire album of this shit, The Family Force 5 Christmas Pageant. But because we love you so much, we’re only gonna share with you this, the shortest track on the record. You’re welcome.
23. Soul Saints Orchestra, “Santa’s Got a Bag of Soul.” Let’s get the horrible sound of crunk rock out of our ears with a little funky ’70s soul, shall we? This is from an outstanding collection of rare-groove Christmas records called In the Christmas Groove. And we really can’t play it without playing the man it’s obviously cribbing from…
24. James Brown, “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto.” This isn’t even really the Godfather of Soul’s weirdest Christmas track…but we’re including it anyway, because it’s awesome.
25. Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, “Jingle Bells.” A reader named Trey suggested we check out Bela Fleck’s Jingle All the Way album. “Not the weirdest but definitely different,” he said. And honestly, we were skeptical—but then we stumbled across this banjo-and-throat-singing version of “Jingle Bells” and we were like, “Holy shit, Trey. You are a master of understatement.”
26. Alice Cooper, Billy Sheehan, John 5, Vinny Appice, “Santa Claus (Claws) Is Coming to Town.” OK, fine, we’ll throw in another track from We Wish You a Metal Xmas. Even though you’ve all been very naughty. We’ve got a list, too, y’know.
27. Psychostick, “Jingle Bell Metal.” You didn’t think we’d get through this whole mix without throwing in at least one metalcore freakout, did you? You know us better than that.
28. Insane Clown Posse, “Red Christmas.” Or an ICP song. There’s also gotta be an ICP song. Whether you like it or not. And we know that secretly, you kinda like it. It’s okay, we do, too. “I’m dreaming of a dead Christmas…”
29. Doctor Octoroc, “Have Yourself a Little Final Fantasy.” From the album 8-Bit Jesus. ‘Nuff said.
30. DEVO, “Merry Something to You.” When a Yuletide comes along, you must whip it. We spent about an hour throwing DEVO puns around and that was the best we could come up with. Sorry.
31. Heather Noel, “Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile.” We went back to the The American Song-Poem Christmas well for this bizarre little Cold War-era artifact. Ah, those were the days.
32. William Hung, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Among the many reasons American Idol sucks worse than ever these days, there’s this: That show has never produced another would-be contestant as delightfully terrible as William James Hung Hing Cheong. If it was nothing but tone-deaf wannabes with humorous foreign accents, we’d watch that shit all the time.
33. Eban Schletter, “Carol of the Bells.” When he’s not composing music for shows like Spongebob Squarepants, Eban Schletter records bizarre concept albums like Cosmic Christmas, which has something to do with a satellite that brings the spirit of Christmas to alien civilizations, but is mostly just an excuse for him to do theremin-and-analog-synth covers of old holiday warhorses like “Carol of the Bells.” Cosmic, man!
34. Angry Snowmans, “Drinkin’ Rum & Egg Nog.” A reader named David really wanted us to feature these guys. So here you go, David! Just remember to drink responsibly: After your fifth rum & eggnog, switch to brandy & eggnog.
35. MDC, “Black Christmas.” A little holiday nihilism, courtesy of the Bay Area punk band known alternately as Millions of Dead Cops or Multi-Death Corporation. On second thought, David, go ahead and drink yourself into oblivion. Damn, we’re all depressed now. But hey, I bet I know what would cheer us up…
36. Jingle Cats, “White Christmas.” Nope, that really didn’t help at all. Let’s try something else…
37. Sparks, “Thank God It’s Not Christmas.” Ah, much better. This is the venerable art-pop duo Sparks in full ’70s glam-rock mode. We’re not even sure what it really has to do with Christmas, but it’s just a great song.
38. The Polyphonic Spree, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” Tim DeLaughter’s orchestral rock ensemble in full-on psych-rock mode, from their new Christmas collection, Holidaydream. If more Christmas carols were this creepy and minor-key, the holiday music at the mall might actually be bearable.
39. The Flaming Lips, “A Change at Christmas (Say It Isn’t So).” This isn’t really the Lips at their weirdest. But it’s certainly Wayne Coyne at his most awkwardly sincere. You’re not just a dreamer, Wayne. We believe it can all change! Even here at Weird Band HQ, we’re not above a little peace-on-earth sentimentality. In fact, after all the shitty Top 40 versions of “Frosty the Snowman” have faded, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
40. Barnes & Barnes, “I Had Sex With Santa.” Well, that and a few cheap laughs. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!
Metallagher
Some of the bands we blog about require a lot of explanation. We have to give you their whole history, explain how they pioneered some obscure subgenre no one’s ever heard of, tell you that all their instruments are woven from human hair or that they write all their lyrics by putting refrigerator magnet poetry on a Ouija Board or some shit. Some of the bands we blog about are fucking complicated.
And then there’s Metallagher.
Metallagher is a Metallica cover band in which the lead singer is a Gallagher impersonator. Between songs he tells bad jokes and during songs he sings and smashes watermelons. And that’s pretty much all you need to know.
If you really need more backstory, read this interview. You will not be at all surprised to learn that they thought of the name first and the band came later. Or that they’re from Minneapolis. Because really, what else is there to do in Minneapolis except get drunk and think up band names like Metallagher?
Like most cover bands, Metallagher are reportedly best appreciated live. Our friends Jay and Adam were the first ones to tell us about them, and they said the live show was a fruit-splattering spectacle worthy of GWAR. Except instead of going home covered in fake blood and alien jizz, fans go home covered in actual watermelon juice.
They really need more videos that skip that bad-joke-telling part of their act and get right to the fruit-smashing part. But this “promo video” gives a decent idea of what they’re about. Hope they come back to L.A. soon. Maybe for a double bill with Metalachi?
Links:
Captured! by Robots
Photo by Snapcult
You know what automatically makes just about anything cooler? Robots, that’s what. By that measure, Captured! by Robots (no relation, as far as we know, to Panic! at the Disco) is the coolest band on the planet. There’s only one human in this nine-member band, and he’s a whiny douchebag in a gimp mask with fake intestines hanging over his beer gut. Whereas the guitar player, GTRBOT666, is like eight feet tall and plays a double-neck Flying V combination guitar and bass. Because shit, why not? He’s a fucking robot. They can vacuum our carpets and assemble our automobiles. How hard can it be for them to play three-chord hesher bait?
Actually, the robots aren’t really the driving force behind Captured! by Robots. It’s that lone whiny human (but we had you going for a second there, didn’t we?). The joke perpetuated by Jay Vance, aka JBOT, is that he started building robot bandmates because he was sick of his flesh and blood ones…but then the robots rose up and enslaved him, and now they run the band. There’s a cautionary tale in there somewhere, but we’re not sure if it’s “Stick to your human band” or “Skip the robots and taking up DJing.”
Anyway, here’s a clip of C!bR’s live show, which is really the main attraction here. Musically, they’re in no danger of replacing us meat puppets. Although their “Don’t Stop Believin’” cover ain’t half bad. (By the way, high-fives to reader Aaron for suggesting these guys. Hold on to that feeling, Aaron!)
Links:
Ween
Sad news in the world of weird bands this week: Ween have broken up. At least according to Aaron “Gene Ween” Freeman they have; Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo, heartbreakingly, seems to have been totally blindsided by the whole thing. “This is news to me, all I can say for now I guess,” Dean posted on Ween’s Facebook page. Poor guy.
We never got around to adding Ween to the Weird List sooner because, frankly, we’ve always classified them more as “quirky” than out-and-out weird—more left-of-center than, say, They Might Be Giants and Barenaked Ladies, but part of that same continuum of late ’80s/early ’90s bands whose reaction to the bloviated mainstream rock of the era was to genre-hop with cheeky abandon. But we know plenty of our readers are big fans, so when news of Freeman’s breakup announcement hit yesterday, we decided to revisit their gargantuan catalog (extra-gargantuan, if you include all their self-released ’80s material). And you know what? These dudes were pretty weird.
The hardcore fans don’t really need a tally of all their wackiest moments, but for the punters, let’s include one anyway:
Their early, self-released cassettes, mostly recorded when they were still in their teens and getting baked in the totally adorable Philadelphia exurb of New Hope, PA (I’ve been there and, trust me, it’s like if Martha Stewart designed an entire town), included such immortal titles as Axis: Bold as Boognish and Erica Petersen’s Flaming Crib Death. They recorded everything on four-track and would frequently speed up or slow down the playback to achieve various creepy psychedelic and underwater effects, like on this track.
Their first major-label release, 1992′s Pure Guava, included such track titles as “Reggaejunkiejew,” “Poop Ship Destroyer” and “Touch My Tooter.” Amazingly, it also produced a hit single, “Push th’ Little Daisies.” When their label, Elektra, made them release a radio edit of the song that omitted the word “shit” from the lyrics, they replaced the word with a Prince sample and titled the new version “Push th’ Little Daisies (Shitless Radio Edit – No Shit).”
In 1996, they went to Nashville and made a country album. It was actually pretty good, too.
They followed that up in 1997 with The Mollusk, a nautical-themed concept album that many consider to be their best work—or at least their weirdest. It also inspired at least one great Lego-mation video.
They became one of the first bands to fully embraced digital music formats in 1999, when they released their next album, Craters of the Sac, exclusively on MP3.
They committed fewer acts of weirdness in the ’00s, although they did release their one and only full-on house track, the awesomely ridiculous “Friends.”
Even post-Ween, Dean and Gene have been keeping it weird. Gene’s first solo album under his real name, Aaron Freeman, is made up entirely of Rod McKuen songs. Dean Ween, meanwhile, has mostly gone fishin’—literally. You can charter a fishing trip with him on the Delaware River or off the Jersey Shore through Mickey’s Guide Service.
It’s also worth mentioning that arguably no other band, over the course of the past 20 years, covered more musical terrain. Ween songs range from punk to psychedelic rock to lo-fi bedroom folk to ambient tape loop experiments to country to reggae to bossa nova to funk to sea shanties to Led Zeppelin covers and back to punk again. They could seemingly do anything—and while much of it was done with tongue firmly in cheek, it was all executed with undeniable skill, which may be the single quality their fans love about them the most. Listening to the Ween catalog is like listening to a really good barroom jukebox after a really good bong rip.
We’ll leave you with “Push th’ Little Daisies,” which for me remains Ween’s crowning achievement (and yes, I know, that’s sacrilege to all you hardcore fans, but c’mon—how great is this song?). Also, how freakin’ cute are Dean and Gene in this video? They look like they’re barely old enough to drive.
We look forward to your Coachella 2014 reunion, guys!
Links:
- Ween official site
- Ween on Facebook
- Ween on MySpace
- Ween.Net (fan site)
- Chocodog Merch (official Ween online store)
- Aaron Freeman official site
- Mickey’s Guide Service (Mickey “Dean Ween” Melchiondo’s charter fishing company)
Bum Sick
I hope you’re not reading this on your lunch break, because you’ll either hurl or laugh so hard the special sauce on your Big Mac will squirt out of your nose.
This week’s band, Bum Sick, is a British grindcore band who do all shit-themed songs in which the vocals have been replaced with farting noises. And uh, yeah, that about sums it up, really.
Credit (or blame) for this disgusting discovery goes to our current MVR (Most Valuable Reader) Ian Frost and another fellow known only as Rapesbladder. Thanks, guys! We’ll think about you every time we drop a particularly noisy deuce this week.
A little background, even though you probably don’t need any: Bum Sick was started in 2009 as a joke (duh) by Andy Bile (aka General Ass Piss), bass player for a death metal band called Amputated and also the creator of a pornogrind band called Bukkake Birth. Don’t know what pornogrind is? Read this and all will be revealed. Don’t know what bukkake is? Oh, you sheltered little lamb. I don’t have the heart to burst your bubble. (Who am I kidding? Of course I do.)
Bum Sick have released one album, Smelly Noise (warning: cover art NSFW), which features such fart-tastic jams as “Shock to the Cistern,” “Swollen Colon” and “Diarrhea Snorting Crack Whore.” If they’re not Beavis and Butt-Head’s favorite band, they should be.
As far as I can tell, Bile seems content to just call this stuff “grind,” while others have lumped it into the pornogrind category. I’m proposing right now that we should start calling this shit scatgrind.* But please don’t credit Weirdest Band in the World if that term catches on. We don’t want to be held responsible if there are 100 shit-themed bands on ReverbNation by this time next year.
Bum Sick’s original songs are good, grossout fun. But for sheer video hilarity, nothing in their catalog tops this Hatebreed cover, set an actual Hatebreed concert clip. Enjoy.
*[Update: Turns out scatgrind is already so widely in use it even has its own Last.fm tag. Shoulda seen that coming.]
Links:
- Bum Sick on Facebook
- Bum Sick on MySpace
- Bum Sick merch (yes, they have T-shirts)
Impaled Northern Moonforest
Hey kids, it’s Weird Wednesday! Wait, it’s Thursday? Man, I really should write my Weird Band of the Week posts before I start drinking.
Anyways…this week’s weird band was suggested to us by a reader named Samuel, who noted that we had omitted the world’s first and greatest acoustic black metal band, Impaled Northern Moonforest. INM was started around 1997 as a joke by members of the band (and I’m really sorry for having to type this name) Anal Cunt, a grindcore group from Massachusetts. To the untrained ear, grindcore and black metal sound pretty similar, but the grindcore kids hate the black metal kids as only siblings can—especially when one of those siblings (black metal) is really into facepaint, Satanic imagery and flashy prog-metal guitar solos.
According to Impaled Northern Moonforest lore, the band was originally meant to be a full-blown black metal project, but it turned into an acoustic deal because another of the Anal Cunt (sorry!) guys was sleeping nearby and they didn’t want to wake him. We’re pretty sure INM’s lo-fi, acoustic approach—generally speaking, all their songs feature a single acoustic guitar, some knee-slap percussion and whispered/growled unintelligible vocals—is all part of the joke, but we’ll buy into the origin story, if only because it makes the guys responsible for such Anal Cunt (sorry!) classics as “Recycling Is Gay” and “You’re Old (Fuck You)” sound touchingly concerned for the well-being of their bandmates.
Impaled Northern Moonforest played only a handful of live shows, and won’t play any more, because Seth Putnam, lead singer for both INM and AxCx (which, it turns out, is the polite way to type “Anal Cunt”—wish I’d known that two paragraphs ago), died last year of an apparent heart attack at the age of 43. They seem to have recorded only one record, variously referred to as an album or demo, that exists in very limited quantities (that’s the cover above—yes, all their artwork is as primitive as their music). Most of their songs are barely a minute long, although it sometimes takes longer than that just to say their titles: “Bloodlustfully Praising Satan’s Unholy Allmightyness in the Woods at Midnight,” “Summoning the Unholy Frozen Winterdemons to the Grimmest and Most Frostbitten Inverted Forest of Abazagorath,” and my personal favorite, “Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar.”
Maybe the greatest thing about Impaled Northern Moonforest is that a whole fan-driven mythology of “acoustic black metal” has sprung up in their wake. There are discussion forums, Last.fm genre memes, and even a bunch of other acoustic black metal acts like Sodomized by Satan, Nyhetsvarsel and Severed Colon. For some folks, acoustic black metal is a joke that never gets old.
There are also a handful of fan-made INM videos, of which this is the best, in our not-so-humble opinions. Seth Putnam, your legacy lives on.
Links:
The Ass Orbiters
Listen, Andy and I are always grateful that anyone bothers to read our crappy little blog, but damn. Sometimes we don’t know about you people.
The votes are in on the latest band from our Submit & Vote page, and despite the fact that their most distinguishing qualities are wearing asshats (not a figure of speech—see photo above) and making fun of the handicapped, the Ass Orbiters have been declared weird by our dubious readership. So, congratulations, Ass Orbiters! You may be tacky and tasteless, but around here, that’s apparently how we like it.
What else can we tell you about this New York band? We’ll let head Orbiter Gary Perkinson sum it up: “We’ve basically made a career out of throwing whatever kind of idiotic crap we can come up against the wall and seeing what sticks. What more could an audience ask for than 45 minutes of cheap laughs and six-minute prog/reggae/waltz songs about diarrhea and putting evangelical Christian ministers in the gas chamber?”
Seriously, what more could you ask for? Mercy, perhaps? You won’t be getting any of that from the Ass Orbiters, buddy. You’re gonna get Ween-like genre-hopping songs with titles like “Tree Rapist” and “I Wanna Pee on That” and you’re gonna like it.
So without further ado, allow us to present what may well be the Ass Orbiters’ defining moment: a little countrified ditty called “Cripples and Drunks at the Roller Derby.” You’re welcome.
Links:
- The Ass Orbiters on Facebook
- Gary’s SoundCloud page (featuring more Ass Orbiter classics)
- The Ass Orbiters on ReverbNation
Threebrain
Back in 2003, I had one of those horrible, soul-crushing jobs where you sit at a desk all day and chip away at the same boring, tedious, a-monkey-could-do-this-shit tasks knowing that your reward, upon completion of said tasks, will be another giant, teetering stack of the exact same boring, tedious, a-monkey-could-do-this-shit tasks. It was assembly line work, basically, except that instead of a bad back and exposure to carcinogens, I got a fat ass and carpal tunnel syndrome. At least my cubicle had a window. With a view of a Chevron station, but still.
In between monkey tasks–and since I’m not a monkey, there grew to be a great deal of time between monkey tasks–I whiled away the hours in all sorts of stupid ways. This was before Facebook and YouTube, remember, so even with access to the Interweb, my cubicle-bound office-mates and I had to make due with some pretty primitive entertainment options. We created lots of fake Friendster accounts. This one girl Sarah got me totally hooked on a ridiculous videogame called Snood. We anticipated the arrival of Friday happy hour with lots of rockin’ out to “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” It was a simpler, more innocent era.
Somewhere, in the midst of all this, someone turned me onto this amazing, totally stupid little Flash animation featuring a squirrel and a song in which a guy with a chipmunk voice basically just screamed “Weeeee!” a lot. In my somewhat dehumanized state, I thought this was pretty much the greatest thing I had ever seen. That squirrel and that “Weeeee!” song helped me through some dark days.
Eventually, I got another, less soul-crushing job and I put those dark days behind me. Or so I thought.
A few days ago, a reader named Steve R. wrote in and suggested we feature a band called Threebrain. And damn if it isn’t the same crazy bastards who did that “Weeeee!” song. Turns out they did a whole crap-ton of cheesy little animation videos in the pre-YouTube early ’00s and most of them are still viewable on this site. Ain’t the web a wonderful place? Nostalgia is but a mouse-click away.
So thanks, Steve, for bringing back a fond memory I had inadvertently buried in my mad dash to mind-erase most of my miserable 2003 existence. Turns out it wasn’t so bad after all. I even miss Friendster, kind of. At least they didn’t try to data-mine our entire browser history like those fuckers at Facebook.
I wish I could tell you more about Threebrain, but honestly, the amount of info out there is surprisingly limited, considering that back in 2003, that “Weeeeee!” video was more ubiquitous than the dancing hamsters. Allegedly it was the work of a duo from Morristown, New Jersey. They put out two albums, Weeeeee! – Albert Christmas Squirrel and Fetus Trackstar, in 2001 and 2003, respectively. They’re both still available on iTunes, actually. The music is sort of like if the Violent Femmes tried to make a children’s album–but a children’s album with song titles like “Hot Dogs Are Shit” and “Buttbadger 123.” And if the only thing they had to record their work on was a crappy laptop mic. And they sped up their vocals to make themselves sound like chipmunks. Yeah, it’s kinda like that.
More recently, Threebrain appears to be the work of just one guy: this guy, in fact. That video was uploaded just three weeks ago and yes, it really is just seven minutes of that guy noodling around on his banjo and singing in weird voices. The rest of his YouTube channel has other videos that are more in the “Weeeee!” tradition of lo-fi animation accompanied by silly songs, as well as a bunch of videos of something called Toilet of Wisdom, which appears to be some kind of three-man comedy show. He promises on YouTube, and also on Threebrain’s (former?) online home, GonadsandStrife.com (“where funny lives!”), to make “a new cartoon every damn day,” but as far as I could tell, he’s only made about three in last year or so. But hey, that’s cool–we promise ourselves to update this site two or three times a week, and you can see how that’s working out. Sometimes great art takes time–and so do 15-second slide whistle cartoons.
So hopefully Threebrain will get his mojo back soon and spawn another Internet viral sensation. Or maybe the days of primitive Flash animation videos are past and we’ve all moved on to cat videos with comedic voiceover dialogue. Either way, here’s a blast from the past, starring Albert Christmas Squirrel. Trust me, you’re totally gonna watch it and be all like, “Weeeee!”
Links:
- Threebrain official site (currently just a static page promising “new site coming soon”)
- Gonads and Strife! (onetime online home of Threebrain; appears to have been inactive since April 2010)
- Toilet of Wisdom (a collection of quotes from bathroom walls; may or may not be related to Threebrain-affiliated comedy troupe of the same name)
- Threebrain on MySpace
- Threebrain’s YouTube channel
- Threebrain on Facebook
- Threebrain at Albino Blacksheep (classic Flash videos)
- Threebrain on Newgrounds (more recent videos)
Rancid Penguin Molestation
There’s kind of a long story behind how we stumbled across today’s band, so bear with me. It all started when a reader named Steve posted about 87 suggestions for bands we haven’t featured yet. Most of them we’d either heard of or (sorry, Steve) didn’t sound all that interesting, but one jumped out at us. Partially because the band’s name is—pardon me while I copy-paste this shit—Omphalectoicxanthopsia. And partially because Steve, after obsessively including links and/or long descriptions of every other band he mentioned (if you’re really bored, you can read his whole post on our Submit & Vote page), suddenly got all cryptic on us.
“A friend told me they were weird,” Steve wrote. “so I googled them, saw some weird pictures, and just thought ‘I’m staying the hell away from that.’” And you know us. Anything that makes normal people (and even weirdos like Steve) say “I’m staying the hell away from that”—we dive into it like it’s a swimming pool full of unicorns and rainbows.
So we too Googled Omphawhatchamacallit, and here’s where it gets interesting. It turns out that this band makes something that even I, degenerate that I am, had never heard of before called “pornogrind.” (They also call it “pornoise,” but that seems to be a term they just made up.) And they’re not the only ones. There are literally dozens, maybe hundreds of bands out there tagging their music as “pornogrind.” Apparently I lead a very sheltered life.
At first, based on the first tracks of Omphalectohforfuckssake we could find, I thought pornogrind was just a really harsh form of grindcore on which everything’s so sped up that it just sounds like an ugly smear of ear-fucking noise. That’s basically what their tracks all sounded like, although one did have a wacky acoustic guitar solo buried in it. Then we Googled “pornogrind” and learned that—duh—it’s basically exactly what it sounds like: Grindcore with really, really foul porn-related band names, song titles and I guess lyrics—although the lyrics are without fail completely unintelligible because they’re delivered in that guttural Cookie Monster style that afflicts so much bad metal these days.
Anyway, long story short, there’s a LOT of these pornogrind bands floating around out there in cyberspace, and after you spend a few hours Googling their names for more info, you’re going to have to spend many more hours clearing your browser history so your girlfriend doesn’t kick you out of the house. Most of the search results for things like “Enema Bath” and “Cock and Ball Torture” (yes, actual band names) are not music-related, is what I’m saying. You have been warned.
Still, we plowed through as many of these pornogrind bands as we could stomach because, hey, the whole damn genre is pretty weird and hey, when you see this much horseshit in one place, there’s just gotta be a pony in there somewhere, right??
Well, no. Here’s the thing about pornogrind: It sucks. All of it. It’s just sped-up death metal/grindcore noise with porn samples and titles like “Anal Cum Shot” and “Regurgitated Semen.” In a way, it’s actually the opposite of weird—it’s the sort of shit 10-year-old boys dream up to gross out their friends, played in a we’re-just-pounding-the-fuck-out-of-our-instruments style almost totally lacking in any of the more technical aspects of true grindcore and extreme metal. It’s probably all meant to be funny on some level, but listen to enough of it and—much like actual porn—it just becomes depressing. Who spends days, weeks and months of their lives writing, rehearsing and recording music in their garage, and then decides, “Hey guys, let’s call ourselves Engorged Vaginal Abyss (yes, another actual band name) and write songs about raping strippers”? Sad people, that’s who.
It was in this context that we stumbled across Rancid Penguin Molestation and their pornogrind parody song/video, “Placenta Pudding Polka.” After all the necrophilia and pedophilia and coprophilia and whatever-philia, it was like a breath of fresh air. Actually, Rancid Penguin Molestation appears to be the work of just one man, a dude from Wisconsin named Cody. Here’s his MySpace page [Update: It's apparently since been deleted] on which he declares that “Except for grindcore, I detest anything else that ends with a -core.” Amen to that, brother!
So thanks, reader Steve, for sending us down this particular internet rabbit hole and indirectly leading us to so-stupid-it’s-awesome charms of Rancid Penguin Molestation. And in case I wasn’t clear on this point: No, we won’t be featuring any more pornogrind bands. So don’t even ask.
P.S. No, we’re still not sure how being “fart raped” differs from being actually raped. Pretty sure we don’t want to find out though.
Links:
- Madderbass’s YouTube channel (creator of Rancid Penguin Molestation)
