Noise for Zeros

Breathe The Thing Out 7″
Sympathy for the Record Industry, 1992

Slug was a band that was always pushing the envelope, and therefore was always a couple steps ahead of a huge fanbase. They did manage to get some critical acclaim and a string of records released over their 6-year existence, but those releases, populating used record store bins nationwide, seem to be the only trace remaining of one of the more interesting noise rock groups of the last decade. And to categorize them as noise rock isn’t entirely accurate, since their core sound mutated in so many different directions, so much so that their later records contained long stretches of soothing dub, eerie scratchy tape loops and other sonic experiments far removed from the typical noise rock arsenal. Part of their novelty was the use of 2 bass guitars and loads of unconventional (read: experiemental) instrumentation, including tape loops and multiple drummers. All these elements cook up a sonic stew that sounds something like Crash Worship crashing an Unsane show, or more accurately, like a brutal extension of an earlier forward-thinking L.A. troupe, Savage Republic. One of my favorite Slug releases is this 3-song 45, which captures their early straightforward rock sound, with a loud, dense stomper “Breathe The Thing Out” and the rumbling krautrock trance of “Go Tell” and “Break Neck”.

DOWNLOAD:

Slug – “Breathe The Thing Out”
Slug – “Go Tell”
Slug – “Break Neck”

Stand Behind Me / Quiet Line 7″
Amphetamine Reptile, 1994

Worldwide LP
Dead Eye Productions, 1992

One of the most overlooked gems of the impressive AmRep catalog is this blazing single from German noise rockers Party Diktator, featuring one of the most hyperactive bassists you’ll ever hear. And by hyperactive, I certainly don’t mean funky goofball slap bass, or the notoriously overdone bass Crime was guity of, but instead, totally raw, pulverizing, full-throttle, crackpipe-smoking bass that gives Party Diktator an extra aggressive snarl. Sounding something like the precision of the Jesus Lizard rhythm section crossed with the textured, noisy, beefy spasms of another AmRep favorite, Hammerhead, this record totally rips and yet somehow never received the attention given to lesser bands of the genre. Perhaps the fact that their other records were harder to find domestically, or that they never toured the U.S. (as far as I know), Party Diktator never ascended to noise rock glory in these here United States.

So after being primed and pumped up about this band, I sort of expected AmRep to release an album proper, as they’d done for many other kickass bands in the mid-1990s, introducing under-the-radar bands like Hammerhead, Guzzard, Today Is The Day, and Chokebore to the relative noiserock masses, but alas I never saw anything else from Party Diktator. Apparently, Roadrunner Records released an album in 1996, called Dive Bomb, but it wasn’t widely distributed in the U.S. as far as I can tell and I’ve never seen a copy. And then one day, after dedicating an afternoon to digging thorugh the massive vinyl stockpile housed at Jerry’s Records, I stumbled across Party Diktator’s 1992 debut album Worldwide. At that point I never knew such a thing existed, so it was quite the find and made digging through an ass-ton of the worst records known to man well worth the trouble. As you may expect, the songs and recording on Worldwide aren’t as strong as the AmRep single, but it is surprisingly good, considering that it was released a 2 years earlier.

DOWNLOAD:

Party Diktator – “Stand Behind Me”
Party Diktator – “Quiet Line”

Party Diktator – Worldwide LP (45.6mb Zip)

LINKS:

Party Diktator on MySpace
Party Diktator info on I Heart Noise blog

Silverfish EP
Wiija Records, 1989

My last post about PRE reminded me of another brash British band fronted by a ferocious foreign female: the almighty obscenity-laced, tinnitus-enducing Silverfish. Legend has is that the UK-based band found their American screamer Lesley Rankine kicking the shit out of someone backstage at a punk show and knew instantly they’d found someone fierce enough to wail over their massively overamped racket. Released at the dawn of what would soon be known as the “grunge” era, alongside other noisy, thick-necked punk from Seattle from the likes of Mudhoney, Tad, and the Melvins, Silverfish approached music as a volume war with guitars hopelessly fuzzed out and distorted, with a rhythm section that added to the din, just barely forming the mess into songs. This debut 4-song EP kicks off with one of the most hilarious/righteously punk lead ins you’ll ever hear, as a sample of Dolly Parton singing “Jolene” gets interrupted by Rankine screeching “MOTHER FUCKER!” It’s a totally amazing and appropriate way to start this beast of a record. And it still makes me smile any time I hear it. Russ Meyer‘s Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill! even gets sampled, so you really know what wild ass angle they’re coming from. Touch and Go Records saw the light and reissued this record with 4 more songs as the Cockeye LP in 1990. I don’t know if I have a bad pressing or if the T&G version was remastered, but I’ve always preferred the mix on this EP as it’s so grotesquely trebly and in the red — a sound that’s become rather commonplace nowadays, but in 1989 it was unconventionally harsh, even for a band wading around the grunge pool.

DOWNLOAD:

Silverfish – “Dolly Parton”
Silverfish – “On The Motorway”
Silverfish – “Dont Fuck”
Silverfish – “Weird Shit”

LINKS:

Silverfish on Touch & Go Records

Creamy Loop 7”
Caulfield Records, 1992

Here’s the perfect way to kickstart Noise for Heros: a posting of one of the fiercest 7″ slabs of noise rock ever to rage out of the midwest. Germbox was a criminally unknown and underrated band from Kansas City from the early ’90s that played with an intensity that most people weren’t ready for at the time, featuring dynamic songwriting, sickly swirling guitar, a galloping rhythm section, and a vocalist with unhinged screams that cleared venues of all but the hardcore. On par with anything that AmRep was dishing up at the time (the debut Today Is The Day album Supernova would be a good reference point) and as brutal as bands like Unsane, Dazzling Killmen, Zeni Geva, or Swans, this single should be part of any noise hound’s collection. Sadly, Germbox didn’t last long enough to record an LP, but this amazing 7″ and their debut Groaning Bridge 7″ is collected on a CD entitled Fraction of Exaggeration along with some unreleased and compilation tracks on the now defunct Caulfield label.

DOWNLOAD:

Germbox – “Godtrot”

Germbox – ‘Spit”

LINKS:

http://www.myspace.com/germbox