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Weird Band of the Week: 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:
Anklepants
(Photo by Maren Michaelis)
Ever since Daft Punk strapped on their cyborg motorcycle helmets, it seems like every electronic artist from Deadmau5 to the Bloody Beetroots has felt the need to liven up their act with some kind of crazy mask or helmet or headdress thingie. But how many electronic artists can you name with an animatronic penis where their nose should be? As of today, you can name one: Anklepants.
The man behind the Anklepants mask is Dr Reecard Farché, aka Josh Head, whose day job is working in the special effects industry, designing latex models, prosthetics and animatronics. His credits include Where the Wild Things Are, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and one of my favorite weird movies of all time, The Host, a Korean monster movie that you should Netflix this instant if you haven’t already seen it. (Seriously, stick that bad boy in your Netflix queue. I’ll wait.) His skills in this area explain how creepily lifelike Anklepants’ wrinkled visage is, as well as how his penis-nose is able to waggle around seemingly with a mind of its own (watch the video below, you’ll see what I mean).
But enough about Anklepants’ prosthetic schnoz. How’s the music, you ask? Well, that’s pretty fucking out there, too. If you cruise over to his Soundcloud page, you’ll hear some bizarre spins on techno, dubstep and drum ‘n’ bass with titles like “I Took Candy From a Baby” and (deep breath) “InsideyourfacedubstepbeanstalktoheavenfortheAtheist.” Dude’s definitely not coasting on his visual effects skills.
Anklepants’ live show looks pretty fun, too. He uses a custom cordless microphone with all sorts of buttons and presets that distort his voice in various interesting ways, and he seems to enjoy getting out from behind his gear to run around the audience, even when that audience is a bit scattered and obviously really confused by what they’re seeing.
So here’s the video for “[speak you little facehead],” which features Anklepants and his similarly faced sidekick (who also apparently sometimes doubles as a pole dancer at his live shows) tripping balls after devouring a bunch of plastic toys that have been melted in a microwave. Actually, we’re not really sure what’s going on in this video, but we’ve definitely never seen anything like it. Which coming from us is saying something.
Links:
- Anklepants on MySpace
- Anklepants on Facebook
- Anklepants/Reecard Farché on Bandcamp
- Anklepants on Soundcloud
- Qwerty Records official site (Anklepants’ label)
- Squat Club on Bandcamp (Josh Head’s prog-rock project)
Otto von Schirach
(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:
Dir En Grey
(Photo: angst-im-wald)
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:
The Vegetable Orchestra
Doing this blog really is a gift that keeps on giving. You’d think by our third year of operation, bands like Austria’s Vegetable Orchestra would be old hat to us. But truth be told, we only just recently discovered that these guys existed. Apparently, we’re not very good at our jobs.
The Vegetable Orchestra (also known as the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra, or Das erste Wiener Gemüseorchester in their native tongue) was founded in 1998 by a group of college students who were interested in exploring the acoustic properties of, well, vegetables. Initially they created vegetable-based instruments that closely resembled their wood and metal counterparts: drums made of pumpkins and celery roots, flutes made of carrots, a “cucumberphone” made from a hollowed-out cucumber with a bell pepper at one end and a carrot doubling as a reed at the other. Since then, their instruments have gotten increasingly bizarre, often with the aid of electronics; how the hell the “leek violin” works, to give just one example, we have no idea.
When performing live, the VO buys fresh, organic produce that day and assembles it into instruments just hours before showtime. At the end of each performance, they use the vegetables to make soup, which they then serve to the audience. Fresh veggies in a warm broth of Austrian saliva–yummers!
The Vegetable Orchestra have released three albums over the course of their 14-year existence. Their latest, Onionoise, is a mix of techno, tribal, ambient, industrial and avant-garde sounds that would be pretty darned weird even if it wasn’t being mostly produced on produce.
Here’s a 2007 promotional video of the Orchestra in action. Apparently they had to disable comments on YouTube because some people were attacking them for wasting perfectly good vegetables in the face of world hunger. To which we say: Come to a Vegetable Orchestra show and have some soup, you darned crankypantses!
Links:
- The Vegetable Orchestra official site
- The Vegetable Orchestra on Facebook
- Institute for Transacoustic Research (an art project run by four VO members)
Weirdify Playlist 2: The Island of Misfit Toys
Greetings, weirdlings! Welcome to our second Weirdify playlist, live now on Spotify for your listening delectation. This time around, we got inspired by our Weird Band of the Week, Twink (the Toy Piano Band!), and decided to make a playlist full of songs that evoke childhood in various ways. You’ll hear toy instruments, sampled children’s songs and stories, 8-bit, chiptune and videogame references, and the ravings of a paranoid schizophrenic or two. (What can I say? I had some weird babysitters.)
To hear the full playlist, cruise on over to ShareMyPlaylists.com. Here’s what you’ll get:
1. Twink, “Rocket Pop”
2. The Books, “The Story of Hip Hop”
3. Powerglove, “Inspector Gadget”
4. Gangpol & Mit, “The 1000 People Band (Part 1)”
5. Vegetable Orchestra, “Scoville”
6. Gidropony, “We Are Sex Toys”
7. Quintron & Miss Pussycat, “Swamp Buggy Badass”
8. Wesley Willis, “I Whipped Spiderman’s Ass”
9. Max Tundra, “Will Get Fooled Again”
10. Ponytail, “Flabbermouse”
11. Dead Man’s Bones, “Pa Pa Power”
12. Psapp, “Tricycle”
13. Kid Koala, “Fender Bender”
14. Lemon Jelly, “Nice Weather for Ducks”
If at any point you get bored, feel free to skip to the last track, because it’s truly one of the greatest things you’ll ever hear. Trust us on this one.
Here’s the link again. Enjoy!
Twink
Lots of bands use toy instruments in their music, but few do it with as much dedication as Mike Langlie, the man behind Twink, the Toy Piano Band. Since 1999, Mike has been using his growing collection of toy pianos and other gear you’d more likely find at Toys R Us rather than Guitar Center to crank out seven albums’ worth of surprisingly diverse music. Given that Langlie himself calls this stuff “toytronica,” “cartoon pop,” or even “cutetronica,” you might assume it all sounds like it ought to be coming out of an ice cream truck. And yeah, some of it does. But much of it’s also funny, creepy and occasionally beautiful. Turns out these toys aren’t strictly for kids.
Mike was kind enough to send us a copy of his latest album, Itsy Bits & Bubbles, which is about as fun-loving and candy-colored as its title, although there’s a surprisingly strong bottom end to some of the tracks, too—I think it’s safe to say the man’s been listening to some dubstep. He’s also posted videos for most (all?) of the new album’s tracks, all built around cleverly edited vintage black-and-white cartoons. Here’s one of our favorites, for a truly twisted track called “Flibberty Gibbet.” Wonder if any DJs spin this type of stuff at Electric Daisy Carnival? If they don’t, they really should.
Bonus factoid: Among the various labels that have released Twink’s music over the years is Seeland, the label run by Weird List veterans Negativland. Told ya this stuff ain’t just for kids.
Links:
tUnE-yArDs
Okay, so I know I made a big production on New Year’s Day about how we were gonna start having Weird Wednesdays as the day to unveil our Weird Band of the Week–and by the time 99% of you see this, it won’t be Wednesday anymore. Bear with us, okay? We’re still getting used to this whole operating on a regular schedule thing.
So anyway, our first weird band of 2012 is actually more of a solo project. Her name is Merrill Garbus and she operates under the name Tune-Yards…or, as she prefers to type it out, like a 14-year-old in an AOL chat room, tUnE-yArDs. Which right away should tell you that we’re dealing someone a little off-center here.
Fortunately, Merrill’s music is much less annoying than her usual of capital letters. She recorded her first album, Bird-Brains (okay, fine, BiRd-BrAiNs) at home on a voice recorder, multi-tracking her vocals along with some very lo-fi percussion and the occasional guitar, bass, ukulele and hard-to-identify racket. Her music is at once abstract and somehow very pop, with lots of pretty layered vocals and the occasional soul shout–seriously, this woman can belt like Nina Simone, with a force that kind of catches you off-guard when it’s rising up out of all this primitive, home-tape murk. It doesn’t seem like that voice can possibly be coming out of this funny-looking, slightly androgynous hippie art student chick–but there it is, and she totally owns it. Merrill Garbus is fierce.
What’s even more amazing is that, thanks to getting signed to this uber-hip indie label 4AD Records and getting written up all the blogs that are way cooler than, say, us (i.e. Pitchfork, Drowned in Sound, Coke Machine Glow), Merrill Garbus and tUnE-yArDs have become sort of indie famous. The video for her song “Bizness,” off her second and far more polished album, Whokill (okay, fine, w h o k i l l), has racked up over 1.8 million views on YouTube. For something as peculiar as tUnE-yArDs to be seen and heard by that many people…well, it kind of renews our faith in the power of weirdness.
I was really hoping we could embed the video for “Real Live Flesh” off tUnE-yArDs’ first album, because it’s by far the weirdest thing Merrill Garbus has ever done–a sort of dykey, art-school send-up of video vixen come-hitherness with lots of face paint and awkward editing and even more awkward dancing all set to a song that’s like an R&B slow jam getting shaken around inside an empty coffee can. But embedding seems to have been disabled on that video, so we’ll have to settle for the video for “Bizness,” which is actually okay because if we can help get it to 2 million views, we’ll have done our part. Also, if you haven’t already, you should go check out our first-ever Weirdify playlist, because the tUnE-yArDs track “You Yes You” is the first song in the mix and it will make you feel grateful to have been blessed with the power of hearing. No seriously, it’s that good.
Links:
Weirdify Playlist 1: Happy New Year! We’re all gonna die.
Welcome to the first-ever Weirdest Band in the World playlist, kids. In keeping with what seems to already be the dominant theme of 2012–that according to some ancient Mayan prophecy, the world is going to end before next Christmas–we decided to go for a festive yet apocalyptic theme. Armageddon itself will no doubt suck, but the parties leading up to it? Fucking epic.
The playlist is up now on Spotify, courtesy of Andy, our resident DJ and aural mixologist. You can access it here via this nifty website we recently discovered called ShareMyPlaylists.com.
1. tUnE-yArDs, “You Yes You”
2. Primus, “Tragedy’s a’Comin’”
3. Social Climbers, “That’s Why”
4. Yip-Yip, “Anarchist Clog”
5. Mr. Bungle, “Ars Moriendi”
6. The Residents, “Boxes of Armageddon”
7. Laibach, “Two of Us”
8. Rammstein, “Du Hast”
9. Super Geek League, “Here Come the Cops!”
10. The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, “If We Go”
11. The Books, “Enjoy Your Worries, You May Never Have Them Again”
12. Tobacco, “Tape Eater”
13. Wagon christ, “Sentimental Hardcore”
14. Die Antwoord, “Fish Paste”
15. Brokencyde, “Dis Iz a Rager Dude”
16. Sir Ivan, “For What It’s Worth (FORD Rock Dance Radio Edit)”
Did you miss the link? Here it is again. Happy listening!
The Superions
As we gear up for another round of dysfunctional holiday get-togethers with our respective fam-damnlies, Jake and I would like to take a moment to reflect back with gratitude on all that 2011 brought us here at TWBITW. This was the year in which we had our highest traffic day ever; in which our average monthly traffic nearly doubled; in which we discovered Here Come the Mummies and witch house; in which we got mentioned by The Onion (OK, it was really just the Denver/Boulder AV Club, but close enough); and in which we got to see Peelander-Z in the costumed, squid-kicking flesh. Oh, and somehow I managed to find time to get married. (Jake is still saving himself for the right girl and/or vaginally equipped life form.) It was a pretty great year.
Most importantly, we got a shit-ton of band suggestions, comments, emails, Facebook likes and ego-stroking gestures of goodwill from you, our readers. So thanks for all that. You are the rum in our eggnog.
We’re going to enjoy a little down time for the remainder of 2011, but we’ll be back in 2012, bright-tailed, bushy-eyed and ready to unleash more weirdness upon the world. And we’ll be making some changes to expand the scope (and hopefully the readership) of this site. So stay tuned, ’cause it’s about to go down like Foxy Brown. Or something like that.
In the meantime, we’ll leave you with our favorite Christmas-themed weird band: The Superions. They surfaced last year with an album called Destination…Christmas! that basically sounds like an even campier version of the B-52′s…which makes sense, given that the head Superion is the B-52′s’ shouter-in-chief, Fred Schneider. Apparently they also do a few non-holiday-related songs, too, but we prefer to think of them as Schneider’s secret gay plot to forever associate Christmas with hunky shirtless dudes dancing with fruitcakes. Enjoy your holidays!
P.S. They also have a Fruitcake app, which you can purchase for 99 cents here. We haven’t tried it yet, but we’re guessing it does not contain actual fruitcake recipes.
Links:
- The Superions on MySpace
- The Superions on Facebook
- What the Fruitcake (official Fruitcake app site)
