The A-side is threaded together by a guitar lick that nihilistically stabs at its own seams. It hovers around the murderous intent of the track like fresh meat, towing the new slack in a whirlwind oddly reminiscent of the bassline to “Tahitian Moon.” Then the hook comes in, forcing closer attention to the lyrics and resulting in the same awe/sickness Bully or Gummo had on the first go. It’s funny, but “He Got Stabbed in the Throat” is the most violent combination of words in the song and also the least intimidating. Take a deep breath and ingest that.

In an incidental or coincidental twist, the b-side covers the blood stains with a cultish swipe and testament to love. It’s a catchy change of pace and the perfect antithesis to the preceding horror. Almost too catchy for its own good, “All I Need Is Your Sunshine” luckily contains enough Floridian weirdness (a la Cop City Chill Pillars) to strive out some of the sunlight at ungodly hours. And if you’re unlucky enough to be in love, you’ll probably wear out the grooves. The 7” was released on Be Grown Records although Slovenly is backing it as if it was their own. If you’re lacking wit, that means it’s highly recommended.

(WORDS OF THE WISE: Don’t pass out while listening to the b-side or the runout groove will put you in a tornado drill position)

Dead People - Feel the Light 7” EP

Primal, bone-shaking repetitive riffs that claw at your skull until your body gives in. Pair it with an androgynous howl that sounds spat from the end of a mile long drainage tunnel and you have the perfect soundtrack for digging up corpses in a pet cemetery. These four tracks were recorded at the House of the Dead studio in New Orleans (imagine that). Grigri not included.

Chinese Burns - Calculator 7” EP

A-side starts off with angular early-Wire chops before grunging out into lo-fi reverberations of heavy garage spunk. The guitar sounds sticky against the smooth, yet menacing drawl of the man behind the mic. And if you’ve had a recent break-up, it’ll break the crust off your heart just in time for a rebound to lick up the gooey insides. Double a-side steps gloriously onto the KBD ladder while the finisher sounds like a mash between “My Generation” and the Sneaky Pinks. We immediately regret saying this, but Australia never sounded so good.

Poppets - 1+1=2 7”

We got turned onto the Poppets around the same time their LP dropped on FDH and have been in love ever since. “1+1=2” carries on with their tradition of melodic  Ramones-by-way-of-Gainsbourg French pop punk and it makes you feel warm in all the right places. The b-side is just as catchy, carrying the vibe of a Calvin Johnson sweater party while sounding as far away from that 90’s scene as you can possibly imagine. We hope to run across them so we can give them an overlong, awkward hug.

(Side note - If you play this at 33 rpm it sounds like The Spits)

THANKS TO WINDIAN RECS FOR THE CARE PACKAGE. GET ‘EM ALL AND MORE AWFUL GOODNESS (INCLUDING A PENETRATORS REISSUE) HERE!!

RAMPART: THE MASTERPIECE UNSEEN 

Woody Harrelson has stated that he was tremendously disappointed with Rampart after his initial viewing. The disappointment culminated in real hesitance by him to do press for the film and attend festival screenings. Suddenly, a powerhouse partnership between Harrelson and director Oren Moverman, which produced their ace, high acting character study The Messenger and earned the duo parallels to Ryan Gosling and Nic Refn, verged on a premature disbanding. Harrelson’s dissonance spurned from the creative license Moverman took when editing Rampart. Tight plot points and supporting characters in James Ellroy’s screenplay were pushed to the periphery or left out entirely, as Moverman chose to focus solely on Harrelson’s pained cop nicknamed Date Rape Dava, a main character stricken with a dysfunctional diet and sex-life. 

After Harrelson viewed the film a second time, however, his opinion underwent a total 180. The actor contacted Moverman to share his reverse approval, and Moverman, who has said he was understandably relieved, began revving up an idea for a third Woody project, a “Manhattan murder mystery” unrelated to Woody Allen’s.

But after I watched Rampart, I saw the potential for the labyrinthine ensemble drama Harrelson envisioned and expected, a West Coast version of Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City that runneth hot cement and cool palm shade in its macro painting of a police force, not an enforcer. I haven’t found any quotes from Ellroy about the final film, but I can’t imagine he’s elated given L.A., noir, and crime are his forte. 

Instead, Moverman’s edits create a lesser companion piece to The Messenger that will inevitably be shuffled into the deck of all the dirty cops in cinema’s past. Rampart is a superior work to the faux-gritty street-tuff theatrics of David Ayer’s Training Day and Harsh Times but lacks the scintillating originality, hardcore realism, and crack Catholic demons of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. Which is a shame, because Harrelson’s commitment, down to the odd affectations in Dave’s casual speech and his sallow, feral appearance, is commendable; you sense Harrelson’s hunger to stretch his talent to become a frequent Best Actor player, and also the vulnerability of a man aging who was famously balding in his early 20s.  

Another observation I couldn’t shake: Playing a homeless vet, Ben Foster (pictured above) does such a spot-on Steven Wright impression that I wondered if it was intentional. Honestly, the casting of Wright as this mumbling would-be street prophet would have been a stroke of genius, thereby allowing Foster to play a different, more substantial role. Or perhaps this bum was originally more substantial too. Rampart is the odd movie that cloaks a better movie from the viewer.—SWAMI VISIONS     

Pop. 1280’s Step Into the Grid 12” cleaned our clocks with the heaviest nosebleed of post-industrial sludge since John Sharkey went AWOL to hang with kangaroos and make babies. It’s been two long years in transit, but Pop. 1280 has returned with a new full-length to recharge our inner demons to four bars. A misanthropic landscape of dripping bass and saw-like guitars buried beneath lyrics of the darkest imagery imaginable, The Horror aspires create the soundtrack to Hell. Ultimately, it falls just short, an honorable soundtrack of sick finesse for a superlative subway strangling (or two). 

We’ll readily admit that an album opening with the words, “two dogs fucking” is indulgent. By the time the hook and title, “Burn the Worm,” comes around, however, Chris Beetle’s vocals are already secondary to the ripping saw of Ivan Lip. You just go with it. On the other red hand, “Bodies in the Dunes” does what the opener attempts to a tee. A creepfest of hair raising proportion, the track rekindles the hyper-paranoia that bled from Pop. 1280’s early output. Beetle’s lyrics  resemble those a guard finds scribbled on the walls of a serial killer’s empty solitary cell or Joe Spinell’s apartment, spat in an emotionless drawl that seeps into your soul. Eli Roth (or some other wash) would sell his to recreate this feeling. 

Few bands attempt to explore the dark field of aesthetics Pop. 1280 is channeling, and even fewer do it well. TV Ghost and K-Holes come to mind, also working in between the dots of Nick Cave and David Yow. The main difference is that Pop. 1280’s sound climbs higher on the psychological ladder—-Shining to Poltergeist— heat lightning across the DSM, and thus very, how you say, 2012.

First video from the local crustoids that make Paint Fumes—consisting of former one man band Joshua Johnson (Pinche Gringo) with residents of Charlotte’s infamous Sewercide Mansion. We were lucky enough to catch one of their first shows at Drive-In Invasion last year, fittingly ignited with a cover of “Sex Beat.”

Let us tell you, it was pure debauchery. They missed cues, rolled around the filthy stage and barely managed to finish the set. Despite all this, it was by far one of the best shows of the entire fest! But the mayhem didn’t END there. One member was robbed of his shoes, belt and change after he went missing (re: found passed out on the Atlanta sidewalk). The next night, the Fumes played an impromptu gig at 2 a.m. that went on well past the time early birds began chirping. Flash up a few hours later, we ran into ‘em crushing beers on the street downtown. We couldn’t even hold down our coffees.

-SWAMI VISIONS

The holy grail of stoner celluloid, this 1994 documentary is a window into the (non)triumphs of two potheads that get baked before operating forklifts in a local factory, toke up at lunch, and go home to pound beers until they pass out from smoking more pot. Complete with on-the-job anecdotes from little old ladies like, “I wish we had more workers like Barry,” and a personal on-the-clock creed from Barry’s stoned accomplice, “He was employee of the month a few months ago and that’s a real high recommendation;” this doc is a truer testament to chiefers than the interzone of The Dude, Tommy Chong and Larry Sportello meeting in a clambaked clusterfuck. If it were filmed today, Doper would serve as visual bible instruction to aspiring hipsters, but the fact that these guys are low wage lifers makes the watch completely bearable.

RANDOM FACT: Director Jim Van Bebber also made 2004’s atrocious The Manson Family as well as the post y2k Pantera vid “Revolution Is My Name.”

As if recent outputs from NC staples Brain F≠ and Whatever Brains weren’t enough to whet your appetite until the apocalyptic beginnings of 2012, Chapel Hill’s local sultan of punk just dropped two fresh 12”s off the anarchy tree. Yes, Sorry State Records has released two artifacts of wax seething with such a rabid intensity, they’ll make your epileptic relative’s recent Twilight-induced seizure resemble jazz hands.

First off, we have the swan song from the UK’s The Shitty Limits. Clocking in at under fifteen minutes, Speculate/Accumulate sounds like the workings of a crazed Mark E. Smith locked in a room with no substance except a never ending supply of meth and the (MIA) Anthology. If you like any of the above things and lack a huge hard-on after watching the below video, please give Swami Visions your address so we can have you committed to the Institute of Kill Yourself immediately. It’s sad that this is the last thing we’ll hear from this talented group of limeys, but (lucky for you) a couple of them were kind enough to “Boom-a-Boom-a-Boom-a-raaaang” into a new incarnation equally as jaw dropping.
 

It seems the heads of Sorry State either have an ironic wit or a secret nerd fascination with Qi, as they send one band packing into the never-ending bliss while birthing a golden child. Hardcore XI is the debut from Swedish squatters, UX Vileheads, and it makes you want to patriotically waive the US flag with an imperialistic pride worthy of a fascist dictator. This debut screams the glory days of American HC the way modern Merge bands silently fart background music for Gap-friendly lamaze classes. Or, in the words of the label itself, Hardcore XI is ‘quite simply, the perfect hardcore LP.’ Only 110 pressed on gold, so grab ‘em now, twerps. - SWAMI VISIONS

COCAINE, MOUTH WASH, AND A LAWSUIT OVER A SQUISHED EYEBALL: ON THE SET OF STEPHEN KING’S MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE

In 1986, audiences failed to show for a low budget horror film starring possessed, self-starting semis entitled Maximum Overdrive. The movie, based on a short story by Stephen King, would be the first and—for many, many years—last directorial effort from the famed horror author. In good humor, King initially attributed his decision to abandon that directing stuff to professional directors by pointing to Overdrive’s abysmal gross and reviews. Fair enough. But the real reason was far more complex, and nearly as bizarre as one of King’s spooky, minted, psycho visions. During production in the sleepy coastal town of Wilmington, North Carolina, King was blasting his favorite band, AC/DC, and powering through a longstanding appetite and addiction to cocaine and booze. Chuck Verrill, the film’s editor, would parlay that a strung-out King had resorted to “gurgling Listerine [for the alcohol content] and popping pills.” King agreed, offering a more succinct explanation: “I was coked out of my mind.”

A lesser known factoid, even to geeks and gorehounds, is that King, in his altered, hyper state on set, was accused of contributing to the film’s director of photography, Armando Nannuzzi, losing an eyeball. In a horrific freak accident, and brutally ironic given the movie’s premise of sadistic machinery, a lawnmower ran over a stack of wood and fired wooden projectiles in the crew’s direction. Nannuzzi—understandably shaken from an injury comparable to King losing a hand—sued King for negligent work conditions to the tune of $18 million. The case was settled out of court and Nannuzzi, purportedly receiving a fair amount, retreated with one good eye back to his native Italy. King went on to write Misery before kissing rock bottom in 1988. At the behest of his wife, who intervened and admitted to tossing out “all of his baggies, cocaine spoons, empty beers, and bottles of Listerine,” King cleaned up his act just in time for the ’90s. Also, Maximum Overdrive is the shit.—SWAMI VISIONS