Hello, it's me again, Marco, and I'm here to tell you about my favorite band in the whole wide world, The BeatlesCock and Ball Torture. This German band is, along with their compatriots Gut, who I've talked about during the last installment of Pornogrind Monday, one of the forerunners of this metal genre I enjoy so much. Everything I like, Cock and Ball Torture offer in copious amounts: grinding guitars that chug along at a moderate pace; happy Oompa-Loompa drumming that makes me wanna dance on my bed; pitchshifted vomit vocals that sound like a septic tank being drained and awesome, clever song titles like Big Tit Slappers, Panda Penis, Enema Bulldozer, Anal Sex Terror, Faggot Filter or, my favorite, Where Girls Learn to Piss on Command.
Another great thing about this band is that most of the songs you can find on YouTube are set to old-timey videos of people dancing to swing music, which I think is hilarious. Here's what I mean, it's a fan video for the song Heterosexual Testosterone Compressor:
So yeah, go check out Cock and Ball Torture if you haven't and drop me a line, let me know what you think. See you on next week's Pornogrind Monday!
So Diablo III is out in a couple of days and I'm not gonna be able to play it, since I blew all my money on a five-day booze/grilled meat-fueled vacation two weeks ago and now I'm pretty much broke. NO REGRETS. The hype is creeping up on me, though, especially after having played the open beta and really enjoying it, so I did the only thing I could do - I reinstalled Diablo II. I think I'm gonna give the necromancer a spin this time. Never mind that final exams are starting tomorrow and I don't know anything about anything - Diablo must once again be destroyed!
So yeah, on a totally unrelated note, here's Marduk's 1996 effort, Heaven Shall Burn... When We Are Gathered. I'm sure everyone loves the cover art, depicting poorly drawn goblins or orcs or whatever besieging a castle on a grim purple evening, as I'm also sure everyone agrees that vocalist Legion had a great set of pipes. His voice had a distinct, corrosive quality to it, was black as tar and fit perfectly with the music, giving birth to some of Marduk's most memorable work. Seriously, Dracul Va Domni din Nou in Transilvania still gives me the creeps.
Immortal Technique is a rather unusual individual. Below his
intimidating persona as a raper of mixed latino and African-American descent lies
a social and political activist. And he’s not doing it just for the sake of
attracting attention or some other marketing reasons – by clicking here, you can see a very well
educated IT expressing his views on corporate America, and he’s also built an
orphanage in Afghanistan. He be real,
yo.
His second go round, Revolutionary Vol. 2, had better distribution but is nearly
identical in structure, beliefs and passion to its predecessor, Vol. 1 . IT
spits his left-centered ideas with the same intensity, attacking the Bush
administration and discussing subjects like crime, poverty, drugs, war and racial discrimination. He’s vicious, furios, funny as hell (‘’ With
skills unused like fallopian tubes on a dyke’’) and he’s not afraid to resort
to street-level platitudes (‘’ I hope somebody you love dies, so fuck
your crew’’) right in the middle of a political debate just for the sake of showing how much better
he is than you.
First of all, let’s get the downsides of Revolutionary Vol.2
out of the way so we can fully enjoy its awesomeness later on. Being a sequel to
its predecessor, Vol 2 has the same
bland, poorly worked beats that tend to get repetitive pretty early into the
song. At some point it can get really distracting, because it’s hard to focus on his
heavy lyrics while a screeching electronic worm keeps swarming towards my earsone. Then again, the sampling is pretty darn good
and IT has always been about the lyrics, so I forgive him.
The songs on Revolutionary Vol.2 are powerful, both in
lyrics and message. The chilling Cause Of
Death is 6 minute long conspiracy-themed rant about almost every thing you could find in a Deus Ex game, Harlem Streets is an all too true vision
of New York, with its filth and perverted hobos The 4th Branch is and
heartily fuck-you to the Bush Administration.
And it gets even better once you run into Freedom of Speech, You Never
Know and Industrial Revolution; the
first one is a hilarious satire on the musical industry with its mischievous
managers and record companies, the second is a heartbreaking love story told from the first person, while
the latter contains more one-liners than a Mitch Hedberg stand-up.
Still, my one true love has to be Peruvian Cocaine, which I
consider as being one of the best hip-hop songs ever created. This Tony
Montanaesque drug narrative features six notorious rappers, Pumpkinhead,
Diabolic and C- Rayz Walz among others, each assuming a different role in the
drug world. From the common field worker, the paranoid low-class drug dealer,
the cynical undercover cop to the corrupt government official, Peruvian Cocaine
depicts a filthy, corrupted world that once it drags you in, there’s no way
out. The best verses come from the
greatest flow in underground hip-hop, Tonnedeff, who assumes the role of an
American Drug Distributor who tries to rationalize his actions by declaring
that he’s just a product of the world he’s living in ( "Come on, our
fucking home was built on a foundation of bloody throats/ The hungry stolen of
their souls, of course this country's running coke").
All in all, Revolutionary Vol.2 is a great album with a strong
message to which everybody could relate, despite IT’s obvious leftie beliefs .
His charisma, passion and intelligent, creative rhymes make him one of the most
promising mcees out there, so go check
him out.
I’ve already talked about the void White Stripes’s breakup
left in my life – you’ll have to do some google translating there- so I won’t
stress this subject anymore. Not being
too interested in Jack White’s side projects, I was anxiously waiting for him
to take the next obvious step in his career:
releasing his debut solo record. And it came… but I didin’t. Hype is a bitch and, apparently, I can’t get past my stupid habit of getting overwhelmed
by it.
So here’s Blunderbluss, Jack White’s marvelous 2012 debut
that pissed me off so bad that I considered having myself castrated out of
frustration. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike
it, but I don’t fancy it very much either – it has a shitload of annoying gaps that I can’t believe such a
brilliant artist like Jack White could’ve overlooked.
Bluderbuss opens with Missing
Pieces, a nice piece of energetic bluesy groove that makes for an
interesting start. Though a pretty darn tight track, I couldn’t shake the
feeling that something bad is going to happen.
The following track offered me the blessing of a temporary relief : Sixteen Saltines reminisces Blue Orchid, one of White Stripe’s best
work and probably the most played song on my mobile phone. Freedom at 21 is some sort of hybrid between
rock, hip hop and dubstep (I’m dead serious here, listen to the drums) that I
forgot about the second it ended.
Sadly, after Love
Interruption shit goes reeeally downhill. It’s like Jack White decided to give all he
had in the first part of the album and go lazy on the rest because, hey, people
love him so much that they’ll forget his lazy fucking ass. Remember that energy
I was babbling about earlier? Gone. How about that Blue Ochidish track, will the next songs follow in its footsteps
and turn me into a trembling mass of dancing protoplasm? Nope. What we get is a
steamy pile of boring shit, one poorly written ballad followed by the other,
treating with original subjects such as love, relationships, loneliness and so
on. Hypocritical Kiss sounds like the
song I wrote for my kindergarten sweetheart, Blunderbuss
is a bland piano-ballad that bored me so hard I actually went to study for my
final exams, and Weep Themselves to Sleep is… uhm, it’s surprisingly decent.
Jack’s voice sounds good, his lyrical skills have improved… Hey, maybe it’s not so bad after all. Granted,
it’s his first solo alb----- O SHIT, PLEASE, NOT I’M SHAKIN’, OH GOD THE TERROR.
OOOH I'M SHAKIIIIN'
Which takes me to my final annoyances : it lacks focus and
it’s confusing as fuck. It’s not a ballad album, nor a basic alternative-blues
one. The distorted guitars and the occasional frenetic drumming exclude the
possible affiliation to the pop genre, obviously, and I can’t label it as hip
hop either because, duh, Jack’s scheduled meeting with RZA got on some eldritch
abomination’s nerves and never happened. It’s a fucking mess and I don’t know
what to make of it. Is it good, is it bad? Do I need to hire a team of experts
to decide on its quality? Make this the question of the week. I have a ferocious headache to attend to.
Overall, Blunderbuss feels like an overloaded suitcase; no
matter how hard you try to stuff your things in there, both useful and
useless, at some point your
dildo is gonna show up at the luggage control and make you the laughing stock
of the janitors.
While I don't understand its title (you could and still can get the album in pretty much every decent record store, where's the black market part?), Placebo's third studio album is a surprisingly solid addition to their discography. It's not breaking any new ground and the band is still exploring familiar territories - heartbreak, drug abuse, personal torment - yet the music is oddly enticing, even though I was looking forward to an evolution in their sound.
Black Market Music kicks things off with three of the most engaging and energetic tracks on this album: the hypnotic, trance-infused Taste in Men, the fast and crunchy Days Before You Came and the drug-addled Special K, which is one of my favorite Placebo songs ever. All three of these songs are great at showcasing the band's rockin' chops, as the distorted power chords and punk-ish drumming, along with Molko's passionate vocal delivery, make for some of Placebo's most headbanging tunes.
After an awkward rap-metal moment in collaboration with rapper Justin Warfield - Spite & Malice - that's meant to be thought-provoking and provide social commentary in the form of a weird deck of cards metaphor but ends up sounding out of place, the album moves on to calmer, more introspective waters. Passive Aggressive is a piece that's constantly building up tempo on a nice guitar riff, only to repeatedly crash, time and time again, as if following the lyrics: "every time I rise I see you falling". Blue American is a soft ballad with a jarring acoustic guitar line in which Brian Molko's lyrics take center stage, playing back and forth between your own life and the role you play in the lives of others. The best ballad on Black Market Music, though, is the hauntingly beautiful Peeping Tom, with its pulsating keyboard notes and Molko's distinctive voice singing his simple, yet moving lyrics: "The face that fills the hole / That stole my broken soul / The one that makes me feel much taller than you are / I'm just a Peeping Tom." Other highlights include Black Eyed and the acoustic rocker Commercial for Levi, both highly selfish odes to hedonism and living only for one's self. The most mind-boggling song on this album is Haemoglobin, a weird, fuzzy, tripped-out song in which, apparently, Molko is some sort of pacifist fruit catching Jesus' curiosity: "I was hanging from a tree / Unaccustomed to such violence / Jesus looking down on me / I'm prepared for one big silence." STRANGE.
All in all, Black Market Music is a good mix of great, catchy alternative rock songs and quieter songs, which allow Brian Molko to showcase his lyrical abilities through his emotional vocal delivery. It may not go down in history, but it will go down on your little, sexually-confused, brother. To close it off nicely, here's an old live video of Placebo performing Black Eyed. Is Brian wearing cargo pants? LOL
Thanks to Monier from the ComputerGames.ro forums for his alternative take on the Tzeeeac artwork. If only I could convince Marco to become a death metal fan, we'd use this as our full time header image. Unless anyone can come up with a valid plan that doesn't involve beating him, this awesome artwork will probably only rear its ugly head on Halloween. Maybe we could use a variant of the Ludovico technique, like maybe make him watch Mexican cartel beheading videos while listening to The Libertines? I don't know, let's work something out.
I've had a long lasting love affair with pasta carbonara ever since I first tried it as a child, God only remembers when and where. It's pretty much the best pasta dish ever and quite possibly my favorite food in the whole world. There's just something about the richness and creaminess of the parmesan & egg sauce combined with the wonderful taste of cooked bacon and the simple delight of al dente pasta that makes me go berserk whenever I think about pasta carbonara. Like, seriously, all you need to do is show me a picture of a great carbonara plate and it'll send me flying to the nearest supermarket to buy the ingredients so I can cook a pot full of the good stuff. This is my comfort food and, if I were on death row, I'd probably choose a hot plate of delicious carbonara as my last meal. Most restaurant carbonara I've tried has been good, no bad experiences on this front. I just find it a lot more satisfactory and enjoying to make it myself. I'll just blast some catchy hard rock like Gotthard or Shakra and cook a pot full of carbonara like it's nobody's business. Ask me if I give a fuck. I don't.
As far as my recipe goes, in case anyone wants to know, I keep it simple. I boil the pasta (I usually use spaghetti) to a nice al dente and in the mean time I dice some onions and some pancetta (bacon works too) and throw it in the pan with some olive oil. I then make a sauce out of 2-3 eggs, grated parmesan cheese (or whatever hard, salty cheese I have lying around), sour cream and some hot water from the boiling pasta, then season it with lots of pepper. The sauce should have a consistency similar to runny sour cream, if that makes any sense. You'll feel it. When the pasta is cooked, I drain it and throw it in the pan, then take it off the heat, add the sauce and vigorously mix everything together. The heat from the pasta alone should be enough to cook the eggs in the sauce, but not scramble them, so you don't end up with a huge pasta omelette. And yeah, I know adding cream and onions isn't traditional or authentic or whatever. But it tastes damn good, so naysayers piss off.
Usually, my spaghetti carbonara ends up looking like vomit, but I don't mind. It's fucking DELISH. It's so good that I skip the plate altogether and just eat it from the pot like an animal. Here's some pictures I took of the pot after only one serving was (hopefully) left, which I will eat tomorrow morning before heading out to class. I can hardly wait.
Paradise in a pot.
BARF!
So in case you were wondering if this post is going anywhere, rest assured. It isn't. I've only been listening to Burial these last few days as I've been way too busy to check out any other new music, so, instead of some idiotic ramblings about a random band no one cares about, you get a food post. I hope that's alright with you. If not, go have some pasta carbonara. It'll make you feel better.
To close things off masterfully, here's more pictures of pasta carbonara I've collected off Tumblr for this post. I'm just gonna make myself hungry again.
This is a reaaally difficult and frustrating article to
write. It’s the kind of band that writes music of such a
high level of whatthefuckness that it constantly baffles and leaves you
wondering: what’s the point? Well, basically, The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble is a project started in 2000
to compose music for already existing silent movies… and… and… and that’s about
it.
Their self titled 2006 album picks up the formula mentioned
above and goes freaking menstrual with a clusterfuck of genres, ranging from
jazz, acid, and some sort of mutant form of electronic/dubstep, which creates
an eerie sound that I was never able to label or comprehend . There are moments
when I find it to be the perfect kind of background music while sleeping or
studying ; sometimes, it makes me giggle and imagine a slasher movie with a
zombie Frank Sinatra as the protagonist. But then comes that moment when it
creeps the hell out of me and .chester finds me three days later hiding under
my bed – random samples and chaotic drumming alternated with silent parts (both
long-lasting and brief) which are briefly interrupted by high-pitched noises.
In the midst of this
computer generated madness, the jazz thingie works pretty well and it made me
realize how limited and prejudiced people are about this genre. Be honest with yourself: what’s the first
thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word ‘’jazz’’? Annoying trumpets, lame saxophones, impeccable
looking lead singers… The things that give your grandmother wet dreams well
into her 80’s. But here, the jazz element is freaking awesome: it’s dark, gritty and experimental - it’s
like watching Sin City, minus the cartoony violence and a raging Mickey Rourke.
But ambiental as it might be, this is definitely not the kind
of album you’d play while having some sexy time with your girlfriend. And not
just because she’d immediately file for a restraining order on account of you
being such a creep that you played it
prior to sexual intercourse, but because you’d be distracted
from all the other goodies this record has to offer. Although TDKE comprises
all the necesary characteristics, I wouldn’t call it a concept album, because
then we’d assume that it seeks something when it’s really not the case here. It’s all about expressing emotions and ideas
through sound; it’s about drawing surreal images that leave you in a state of
wonder and, finally, it’s about pure atmosphere. And holly hells, ladies and
gentlemen, that’s one very well crafted atmosphere, to say the least – it’s
mysterious, charming, and it sucks you
in right from the very beginning. If this album were released in 2012, it would
have definitely been my first choice for the most atmospheric album of the
year. Unfortunately, Tzeeac Inc. lacks
the proper technology to time travel, so I’ll have to postpone this for
sometime in the future.
TDKE is one hell of a jazz/electronic/ambiental album and
it never ceases to impress me, no matter how many times I listen to it or how
difficult and frustrating it is.
One more thing: how the fuck is it possible for a band
lacking a Wikipedia page to have TWO million scrolls on Last.fm? Come on,
people, I’m expecting some answers. It really bugs me.
Without You I'm Nothing is Placebo's follow up to their '96 self-titled debut and it sees the band shyly expanding upon the themes they began exploring several years back. Brian Molko is the same androgynous, misdirected and conflicted mess of a human being and his personality permeates each and every song, even though the band claims it was a joint effort.
The album opens with one of Placebo's most well-known songs, Pure Morning, in which Molko celebrates his friendship with women, asserting that "A friend in need's a friend indeed, a friend who bleeds is better", hypnotically chanting his lyrics while a twangy guitar line and lots of distortion drape the background. From here on, though, Without You I'm Nothing becomes pretty hit-and-miss. On one hand, there are exceptional tracks like Every Me Every You, one of my personal favorites, the energetic Allergic (to Thoughts of Mother Earth) or the tribal-influenced Scared of Girls, one of their more promiscuous songs. On the other hand, though, there are way too many slow songs caked in opaque, introspective lyrics that elude my understanding, such as Burger Queen, My Sweet Prince (with its thinly-veiled heroin abuse references) and, David Bowie's favorite, Without You I'm Nothing, which is the better of the bunch, thanks to Molko's passionate vocal delivery.
Don't get me wrong , Placebo still have a natural knack for melody, but, as a second album, Without You I'm Nothing isn't really pushing any envelopes - the band is content with swimming in roughly the same waters as before and relying on Brian Molko's odd frontman and main lyricist status to drive the music. Problem is, the music isn't driven very far and, apart from a handful of brilliant songs, the album doesn't quite live up to its predecessor. Thankfully, Placebo began experimenting with the music on their third album, which is where things really take a turn for the interesting. But that is a tale for another day.
I have no idea who this Marco dude is and why he's posting obscene music (pornogrind, really?) on Tzeeeac while I'm on vacation, but let's move on and talk about actual music, shall we?
Placebo have been one of my favorite bands for years, ever since my cousin forcefully introduced me to them. In 2005-2006, we were young and restless, we basically had no lives outside of school and the only times we met were when our parents would get together for Easter, Christmas and a few other occasions. Every time I came by her house, though, she was always listening to a loud, glam-punk band with twisted, poetic lyrics with an obvious erotic edge, and she called it "Placebo, stupid!". The music seemed weird and alien to me, as I was only listening to Nightwish and Ozzy Osbourne at the time and was reluctant to accept there exists other music besides old heavy metal songs that my dad used to listen to. In time, though, reluctance turned into curiosity. I was getting interested in the band. I started asking my cousin to show me videos and the band's image fit the music like a glove: Brian Molko was a skinny, junkie male slut with a girly haircut, drenched in mascara and wearing a black dress; the bassist was a tall, skinny gay dude with huge hands clad in fishnet shirts, while their drummer was a man's man, with long hair and a reserved demeanor behind the drum kit. I had never seen anything like it before and I was fascinated. For my 17th birthday, my cousin burned me a CD with the entire Placebo discography and a bunch of videos, thus turning me into an all-out fan. Then, a few months later, we went together to see them perform live and I was hopelessly hooked.
Their 1996 self-titled debut is a brilliant display of angst-ridden music that somehow still manages to feel uplifting, even in its darkest moments. Placebo were mixing drugged-out glam rock with a fuck you punk attitude and clever lyrics about heartbreak, hating people, being a self-loathing, sexually-ambiguous misfit yet finding the strength to move past it all and live your life exactly the way you want to - and I was loving it. Their self-titled album mixes melancholic, sometimes desperate-sounding songs like Lady of the Flowers and I Know with all-out rockers such as Nancy Boy and 36 Degrees, making for an exciting listen that never fails to entertain. Brian Molko isn't an exceptional guitarist by any means, but he always managed to bring the melody and punch that make a great punk song, while at the same time contributing his distinctive voice to wail the lyrics that confused me for years, only to make more and more sense as I was growing older.
Placebo's first album has aged beautifully and it still manages to sound fresh and exhilarating, even as the band has moved on in recent years to a more alternative rock sound that, frankly, doesn't do anything for me. Or for my cousin, who managed to move on from her obsession with Brian Molko's eyes and replace it with an almost pathological fixation with Arctic Monkeys and their handsome frontman, Alex Turner. I think she enjoys her compulsions. Rock on, Vana!
