Slave--Abyss

So it's been a solid week or so since I've posted anything, and I'm starting to get real bummed out on myself.  I had some pretty good traffic going there for a second, and I just start taking weeks off just because I've got nothing to say and I have no time to write stuff up.  What an asshole I am!  But it's okay, my little lamb, because I'm back to bring you some tasty new tunes that you likely have never heard before.

But I'm going to start this post by doing a "last week's activities roundup," because my week was so busy and interesting (it wasn't).

You see, when I get into something like a new hobby or activity, I tend to obsess really, really hard about it for the first little while.  It happened when I started recording my own music last year, it happened again when I started this stupid, pointless blog of mine, and unfortunately, it happened again with bicycles.  I'm no hippie, but I was recently thrust into the role of unwilling cyclist commuter.  At first I hated it super hard, not least because I was forced to ride my embarrassingly poorly-maintained Diamondback mountain bike on the city streets.  It was horrible, and I constantly felt like I was going to keel over in the street on Metric Boulevard and die shortly before being run over by a lesbian couple who frequently drive through the area.  The way I figure it, the lesbians get pretty close to hitting me on a fairly regular basis, and if I finally give up and die next to the mashed-up armadillo in the bike lane, I imagine that it will be them who deal my final death blow and turn my peaceful death into the splattered scene of carnage that I always imagined it would be.

But I digress.

So after a series of bicycle-related mishaps and a whole lot of time spent learning how to fix bikes, I went and bought my dream bike, which is an ancient road bike that I bought from some guy whose garage was full of them.  It's the kind of bike that a lesbian couple could spend the rest of their time running over with their 4-Runner (between visits to the vet with their dogs, that is) and never properly disable the bicycle.

It rules.

But I've been obsessively tuning up and cleaning the new bike, cannibalizing the parts off of my Diamondback to make sure that I've got dumb shit like reflectors and pedals.  And it's finally pretty much done and I can obsess about it slightly less.

Also, here in the jolly olde Colonies, we had a little major holiday happen yesterday, which went off without a hitch.  I managed to get down to Slam Antonio and visit my grandmother, who just moved here, and then get back without disgracing myself, so that's nice.  But the day started off at my aunt and uncle's house, where we convened after I took a little trip to the grocery store and found my new favorite beer.

"Holy shit!" I screamed at the grocery store in front of a group of Girl Scouts.

I was pumped on this discovery, and since my uncle is like a 60 year old dude who still likes dick jokes (a version of me from the future), we had a great deal of fun with this new discovery of mine.

Some of my favorite lines from yesterday:

"Is that your Boner in your hand?"

"Of COURSE you come over to my barbeque and show up with a Boner."

and

"I'm about to put six tall, dark Boners in my mouth, and I'm going to do it as quickly as possible!"

That last one was me.  My wife didn't think it was as funny as my uncle and I did.

So it was nice, but there were no fireworks because the state of Texas has been declared a state of emergency because of our drought.  I thought I got away from entire states being declared a state of emergency when I left California, but what can I do?  I always bring the disaster!

The last thing I did with my week last week was go Bandcamp surfing.  It's one of my favorite pastimes, and a great way to spend a Saturday.  But it takes heart, patience, and a willingness to listen to a lot of garbage just because the name of the band (or album artwork) is cool/hilarious.  But there are some major gems buried out there, and I'm going to spend the next few days bringing you some of it, as well as receiving some major kudos from bands that I've never heard of before Saturday morning for writing them up.  So let's start with Slave!

Slave is one of the first bands that I found this weekend when I was sitting around in my underwear, massively hungover and slightly sunburned.  You know what helps a bad hangover and slight sunburn better than you might think?  Some crusty lo-fi hardcore, and Slave fucking brings it.

Not only does Slave have the fancy, Coalesce-style album art, but they have the anger, and a name that is as simple as I imagine it is common (Googling reveals that Slave was also the name of a funk band from the 70's and 80's, who have at least one "Greatest Hits" album, and four additional bands, including a rapper).  So many Slaves!  But as far as I can tell, this is the best one.

Slave specializes in Trap Them style hardcore, which is basically my favorite thing ever, so it's easy to see why I would like this band as well as I do.  Do they stroke my raging D-boner?  You'd better believe they do!  But they also bring the Heavy, getting slow and crunchy without falling into the age-old trap of thinking that a "slow part" is the same as a breakdown.

It's not.  DAMN YOU, IT'S NOT!

It makes me feel really happy that bands like Slave are out there; when I was coming up in Bakersfield, California (just north of Slave's motherland, Los Angeles), being in a hardcore band meant being really into writing fourth-rate Hatebreed riffs and watching people do karate in the audience.  God I hate that shit!  But luckily, it would seem that now is the time for hardcore to seize back it's title from the basketball shorts-wearing Neanderthal types and return to it's former glory.  And I love hardcore's former glory so much!

Slave's new six-song EP is available for free download at their Bandcamp page, so go check it out right now if you want to get a whiff of what's going to probably be pretty popular in our pathetic little sphere of the world.  I know I'm into it.

But not as much as I'm into these Boners!

When this Boner hits the back of your throat, all it triggers is your happiness reflex.