SloMo Rabbit Kick
Hortatory Examinations
( Kittybox ) 2004

On SloMo Rabbit Kick's Hortatory Examinations 5-song EP, the Seattle, Washington four-piece write an album that sounds like an office worker slowly going crazy from his corporate surroundings. Not an album of fist-pumping anthems for the proletariat, mind you, but of slow-burning accounts of corporate milieu and the reality of the working world. With songs such as "Man's Routine Is To Work And To Dream", there isn't overt protest or outright fury, but more a mid-tempo discontent never only partially realized by the album's lyrics. However, the chemical-seared guitars and deadpan, Damon Albarn-esque vocals make this the perfect album for anyone walking to a job they hate. Overall, the album shows excellent potential for a band that would most likely be visceral onstage, but on tape, they feel a bit lukewarm.

tyler 12.31.04 [the end is closer]

Wolf Eyes
Burned Mind
( SubPop ) 2004

Okay let's get one thing straight.. . Wolf Eyes IS the end of the world on a cd. This band just fucking destroys! My friend recently turned me on to Wolf Eyes and I immedietly fell in love with it. This shit is pounding, pulsating, brutal, noisy, electronically charged chaos! This band is so noisy it hurts (in a GOOD way!). They manage to be one of the most fuckin' noisy & chaotic bands and still keep the groove! You can actually bang your head to this shit!

The singer, Aaron Dilloway, screams with distortion on his voice throughout this cd and it sounds totally awesome and ridiculous. Burned Mind is just a power electronic massacre! Okay okay, enough with the cheesy metaphors.

Get this album or kill yourself, which is probably what you will end up doing anyways while listening to this cd cause its so damn intense.

Daniel 11.20.04

Damien Jurado
just in time for something
( Secretly Canadian ) 2004

Those seeking the 'Ghost of David' Damien Jurado - complete with mild tape hiss & demo-style authenticity, 'Just In Time For Something' is where you should be headed. Second track on the 5-song EP, "Motion Sickness", rivals the best of Jurado's 2000 SubPop masterpiece such as the title track or "Tonight I Will Retire". The downtuned "Prices" puts Damien's vocals (for the most part) far below the instrument, and without lyrics make this quick cut a modern mystery to repeat and study.

With a heart so large he'd have to wear it as a winter coat, Jurado can record songs to thrift store cassettes and still pass with ease. It's quite obvious the gifted cannot just sit and watch the world pass by.. .

kaleb | 10.25.04

das Oath
DAs Oath
( DimMak) 2004

It takes me approximately 20 minutes to properly prepare a goat's head for sacrilege. The first 7 tracks on DAs Oath's self-titled release blend like one furious 10 minutes song, given there was chord progressions every minute or so. Therefore, if I tell my stereo to repeat the first half of the album - I can get my filthy job done as well as trick my mind with the goods. It's simple math, really.

There are many roaming who are already down with the Oath, somehow I just now blew my hymen - but I feel much better. This album had to have been recorded live in one take, it's damn near impossible to know when that track turned into this track. Blurred, spazzed and bruising - DAs Oath the album will break your attention span into little bits like Mike Teevee in Willy Wonka (you remember.. .). Something happens on 'nobody's married me in years', the three-quarter point on the album. Everything dissipates and a lone guitar is left to strangle in mercy, like a fish out of water - pleading for the giants to return and finish what it started .. . and they do. How this didn't end up on Hydrahead is beyond me, but DimMak has some explaining to do. Think (a very angered) Snapcase frontman Daryl Taberski leading Orchid into a forest fire where the ghosts of Newborn fight for the territory. For the ill-advised, begin with 'the great anything'. Though not the best trackname on the album (did you miss 'a biggot is a spic' and 'awesome rape'?), it's a fury of fistfucks in it's own right.

Get out of your scene, the kult starts here.

kaleb | 09.06.04

Old Man Gloom
Christmas
( Tortuga | HydraHead ) 2004

Good Jesus, I swear I heard the big guy coming to take me as I absorbed Old Man Gloom's Christmas - like falling in & out of consciousness while being taken prisoner to the unknown. If you tearfully require music that not only surrounds the space around you with walls of grizzly fervor, but also sneaks up on you in the broad daylight - OMG are your boys. Play "Skullstorm" at full volume - plus, and I really can't see how you could get "Sleeping with the Snakes" to be quiet.

"You don't need to repeat this - there is not any ceremony anymore ".

kaleb | 08.20.04