Welcome to D-Beat Week

Repeat this measure ad nauseum forever.

I know what you're thinking.  You're thinking "Hey asshole, I've read all of your posts a million times.  I think you're so handsome and cool and have impeccable taste in music."  Thank you, and you're right.  But I do, however, think that it could be validly argued that every week in D-Beat Week on this blog.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree, either.

However, I've got a shit ton of D-beat stuff that I've been meaning to post about, so I decided that another theme week was in order.  And since my other theme weeks have gone over so swimmingly, it seemed apropos to make it an official week by listening to, talking about, and espousing the virtue of my very favorite beat via my good old friend, the Interbung.

Some of you might be asking, "What is the D-beat?  I don't understand!"  The D-beat refers to the drum beat that was made famous by the band Discharge (there seems to be some disagreement about this on the Interhole, but since I've never heard anything about the other sides of the argument, I assume that they are misinformed, false, ungrim, and faggy).  That picture above is the D-beat notated on a treble clef.  For my non-musical readers, follow your nose to hear the D-beat in action.

That first beat that kicks in?  FUCKING D-BEAT!

Usually the easiest way to identify a D-beat band is by looking at their name.  Usually the prefix "Dis-" will be placed prominently in front of another word with which, according the the conventions of the English language, make no sense.  It's not uncommon for bands to be ham-fisted in their placement of the prefix; take the bands Disfear and Dishammer for example.  The band D.I.S. (who I wrote about in a very early post) is another good example, though officially D.I.S. stands for Destroyed in Seconds.

And since those are the only really good examples that I can think of offhand, I guess you can say that examining the name of a band isn't that good of a way to identify a D-beat band.  There are, after all, plenty of other totally crusty bands that have names that are misleading in the absence of "Dis-" from their monikers.  I guess I could have written that above paragraph like I did, realized that the information I gave was not actually as accurate as my brain suggested it was before I wrote it, and then simply deleted the paragraph.  But I like to give people an insight into my mind a little more often than the average "writer" ever would (and I do think of myself as a "writer," with the word placed firmly in quotation marks).  Also, I don't like my posts to be so short that I don't leave myself enough space to insert penis jokes and references to the myriad dumps that I take.

In other words, I don't like to limit myself to just saying things that are accurate.

Anyway, you'd better saddle up, because this whole week is going to be a flurry of D-boners.  It's going to be a torrential downpour D-jizz.  It's going to be a whirlwind of throbbing, veiny, purple drumbeat-specific boners.

Also, you should expect to see the word "boner" plastered across your computer screen, because it's about to get real bonery up in this motherfucker.

Boner boner boner.  See?

So sit back, relax, and allow me to expose my D-boner to you (but not if you're under the age of 18.  I don't want to have to introduce myself to my neighbors).

I Want Press Credentials

I have some friends who get to do cool things, like talk to bands that they like and get promo CD's for free in the mail.  Since I'm so cool and low-key, I've never really gotten around to harassing them for details about how to get sweet swag.  And I'm not even saying that I want it for free; I'll fucking pay for the new Anaal Nathrakh album.  I already have (I still preorder albums like some kind of caveman, and you can get confirmation from Candlelight if you want), and I'm likely not going to stop.  And I'm not pandering for free merch, either, though I'll never turn you down if you offer me a free t-shirt.  I once accepted six free Smirnoff Ice t-shirts from my beer distribution job just because they had that many in my size just sitting there. 

U.S.A.!  U.S.A.!

I'm not saying any of those things; what I'm wondering is, how the hell do I get into the "advance copies of cool and not cool albums" game?  What do I have to do to start getting compact discs in the mail that have nothing but that little cardboard sleeve, which I love more than my toothless brother, surrounding it?  I want to know.

Keep in mind, however, that this isn't a news site.  I write about whatever I want, whenever I want, and that's how I likes it.  I'm not saying that I don't want to scoop other publications (I already did that here), but I am saying that I don't dig deep.  I don't ask the tough questions.  I have a job that actually pays me money, and as the only dude who has ever written so much as a fucking word for this website, I don't have the time of the day to be investigative.  I have ill-conceived grind projects to work on, and people from bands that I admire to email randomly after the proper amount of alcohol has been added.

And they all know who they are.

I just want to get in on the bandwagon here.  I have journalist friends in the Crusty/Cakey Alliance of Superfriends who can do that stuff, and they always lord it over me, because they know that makes them better than me.  And they're correct.  But I don't want them to be!  Just because I eat Taco Bell's Dollar Menu while they get to feast on Value Meals doesn't mean they are better than me!

Who am I kidding?  Of course that's what that means.

I would just like to extend an invitation to labels and whatever the hell other companies can send me things: Do that.  I'm so tired of waiting for the new Anaal Nathrakh album to come out (and that's what this is really about)!  I don't want to do that shit anymore.  I won't leak your album.  I can only send email and write this crappy blog of mine from this computer, and I don't have the foggiest idea about how to leak stuff.

This is beginning to sound overly desperate and unbelievable, isn't it?  Perhaps some reverse psychology is in order.

Hey labels, please send me stuff to leak because I'm bad and have three tattoos that all espouse the virtues of stealing!

Psst....I think that worked.

I'm just sad because I have to wait for stuff like some peon grunt wang just because I am that.  It's unfair!  This is America, and I should be able to get my way just by making a big stink!

ACTUALLY, I SHOULD BE TYPING IN CAPS FOR FULL EFFECT.

Seriously, though, I don't like stealing from bands that I love, and I hate even more to jump through the hoops of giving them my hard-earned cash dollars.  And in an age where the New York Yankees will, for some reason, leak your social security number to Nigerians just because you wanted season tickets because you suck and have no personality, I don't think it's such a surprise that people are tired of transmitting personal information over the interbung.

Other than what they had to eat that night, complete with pictures, or the gory details of their last bowel movement (if you're into Facebook or this exact blog, respectively).

However, I want to be on the trail, and I think that I've given lots of usable text bites to use in advertisements to make my criticism sound legit.  I mean, just picture the phrase "Gave me a raging D-boner, which I promptly walked into the kitchen with and stubbed in the counter while I emptied the dishwasher."  That sounds like something Earache could would appreciate somebody saying for nothing other than an invite to the "listen to music that you want to hear anyway" party.  Or maybe Relapse or Southern Lord want to float me some new material on the off-chance that I deem it "so good I just crapped on the couch in my sleep, and now my wife has locked me out of the house.  Also I was drunk."

I'm just throwing it out there.

But I'm not going to dig for news; that's for assholes.  I just want to reap the benefits that those fine assholes enjoy is all.  And again, since this is America, I'm sure that I can find a way to reap those benefits without the work.  Perhaps a government program geared toward lazy bloggers?

I'm just saying:  Give me music to listen to.

Send MeThings (Via Email), Like Pat Lukens

I love it when people send me things on the internet.  Band demos, videos, pictures of bears; it's not that important what it is, because I just like to see things that aren't fake job solicitations or (for some reason) blueberries that "grow themselves!"  Seriously, has anybody seen that in their spam filter, or is it just me that's getting those ridiculous emails?

Anyway, Pat Lukens--from the original party worms Cut Your Teeth--did the right thing today and sent me a sweet new cut that he posted on Youtube.  In addition to inflating my already bloated sense of self-importance, this gave me the opportunity to not have to rely on my CD collection or music that I stole off the interbung to generate content for this pointless blog.

Sweet relief!

At any rate, I watched the video a couple of times, and it's...an interesting thing for a metal d00d to be doing.  The song is apparently a Kpop song, Kpop being, obviously, the colloquial term for Korean Pop music (which is, incidentally, way better than the pop music in America.  Yes, I listened to the original song).  The original artist is something called 2ne1, which appears to be either a lady or some manner of dance troupe.  I'm not going to do that much Googling for this, and if you think that's lazy and stupid, you've obviously never read this blog before.

Also, you're lazy and stupid.  And a pee-pee.

Pat has taken it upon himself to 1) listen to this music in the first place (which is, realistically, the most flummoxing part of this whole affair), and 2) write and record new backing music for the track, keeping only the vocals and the newly incongruous music video as evidence that it was once a different beast.  At least I'm pretty sure the music is new, since I'm pretty familiar with Cut Your Teeth's canon of music and I can't identify any of the tasty riffage as something I've heard off either of their two releases.  I like Pat's version better, and I'll tell you why.  For one thing, his version strokes my D-boner, which is my favorite boner to have stroked by another man.  Okay, fine, second favorite.

Wait, is this on the internet?

Next, the music is heavy and thrashy, and the fast D-boner-stroking part has this bouncy, staccato vocal line that sounds really otherworldly with the new music behind it.  It doesn't make for good pop music in the way that normal, functional members of society would regard pop music, but it's what I and my fellow social retards would consider "Top Choice."  And I particularly like the part around 1:15, where the girl is for some reason sitting inside of a giant playing card because I think the interplay between the vocals and the guitar line are highly effective, and retain the catchy nature of the Kpop song's original incarnation.

That's a really fucking weird thing to have just typed.  I feel all...gross.

Anyway, take a listen to what Pat Lukens apparently does with his spare time, because it's surprisingly palatable and weird.  For your convenience, I've embedded the original (well, possibly original) version of the song here.  It's something else, all right.

Since I can't find the Pat Lukens Remix to embed, I'll have to just let you follow your nose to it.  Inexplicably, there are no less than 10 "dance cover" videos that pop right up when I try to embed, but not the video with the verbatim title that I just put into the search engine.

Technology!

Listen to Cut Your Teeth also.

Thanks Pat!

Addendum:  if you read the title of this post to mean that you should personally start sending me your band's demo, you read that correctly.  I get bored easily and enjoy this feeling of  having something to talk about fly out of the ether an land on my fat, stupid face.  If it helps, get drunk first.  People who deny that alcohol is, in fact, courage liquified are wrong and aren't your friends at all.  It feels lame to say it so blatantly at the end of a Cut Your Teeth related post, but I'm just going to do it anyway.  And if you decide to send me a data mining virus, you're just going to be bummed out by how many pictures of dicks I have floating around on my hard drive, and how little money I have.

Because I make blogger money.

Intronaut--Valley of Smoke

Intronaut are one of those bands that I discovered quite some time ago (with The Challenger) that nobody else seemed to like except for me.  I'm still flummoxed by that time period; I had lots of friends who were metalheads (at least in a loose sense of the term), and they all fucking HATED Intronaut.  I couldn't even begin to understand why, especially after the release of the stellar Prehistoricisms in 2008.  I listened to that album over and over in my car stereo, much to the chagrin of my passengers, who were unamused by a) Intronaut as a musical entity, and b) the fact that I listened to the album on a continuous loop for almost a full month.

But fuck the passengers in my car!  THEY KNOW NOTHING!

Needless to say, I was stoked when I heard that Intronaut were working hard on the album that turned into Valley of Smoke, which made my Top Ten Albums of 2010 List, which marked the original piece of writing that I did, and which subsequently turned into this pointless blog of mine. 

History!

But it's high time I actually gave a fair and thorough writeup to all of those gems of yesteryear, and I wanted to get Intronaut done first, because I've been working on a special Intronaut-related project.  Though it's unofficial, I've been piecing together the making of the album Valley of Smoke through research I've done mostly while watching South Park reruns, and am turning it into an historical play set for the stage.  There will be music and fun; swashbuckling adventure and touching moments; laughter, tears, a chase scene, and full-frontal male and female nudity.  Also, Sacha Dunable's best friend will be a talking car with a rapier's wit and a sweet T-top.

Oh, the adventures they had during the making of Valley of Smoke!

I'd like to present to you, dear reader, a small excerpt from my play detailing the writing and recording of Valley of Smoke.  Enjoy.

From Act 2, Scene 3

Sacha Dunable, Joe Lester, David Timnick, and Danny Walker stand together in a small Los Angeles apartment, surrounding the smoldering remains of that day's Los Angeles Times magazine that they've been collectively burning in a discarded wok for warmth.  Danny Walker [seated stage right] is naked from the waist up, having painted himself in traditional Native American warpaint.  He wears a buckskin loincloth and ragged cowboy boots; on his head is a grandiose feathered headdress.  He slowly pounds a deerskin drum with a tiny mallet, gazing into the corner and counting to himself.  Sacha Dunable [standing stage left] is dressed in a plaid shirt and jeans.  He stands on a disabled Segway and wears a powdered wig.  Joe Lester [just right of Sacha], sits straight-backed to show off his 9-foot-tall frame.  He wears a USC snuggie and is picking his teeth with the headstock of his bass.  David Timnick [just right of Joe] reclines on a soiled beanbag chair.  He wears the garb of a saucy 50's greaser, complete with cigarettes rolled up in his shirtsleeve.  He combs his hair lazily with a switchblade comb.

Sacha:  "That was some chase back there.  Luckily I just installed that oil slick machine on Marty the Spry Wondercar!  That really gave those Feds the SLIP!  But I still can't figure out why they were after us...do you guys think it has something to do with the magic amulet we found at the haunted amusement park?"  [Sacha produces from under his shirt the amulet, on a thick gold chain, pulsing an unearthly green]

David:  [Combing his hair thoughtfully]  "I don't know, man, but I need to get back to my laboratory and analyze those rock samples I took from the underground treasure chamber.  I think something fishy is going on, and I think those rocks are just the clue we need to break this case wide open!"

Joe: [Stops picking his teeth with his bass and looks quizzical] "But we needs ta work on da album, don't we?"

Sacha:  [Leaping from the Segway] "That's right, Joe!  Danny, what have you got for tasty drum grooves?"

Danny:  [Staring through the group]  "I've got just the thing.  I've been working on it all day...[pounds out a drum groove]...it's pretty good, right?"

Sacha:  "Pretty good?!?  That's dynamite!  We'll make it the main theme to the title track of the record.  I was thinking "Valley of Smoke," because it's a reference to the valley where we live, but also marijuana smokers will identify with it as a lazy, ham-fisted reference to smoking weed!  It's the perfect marketing scheme!"

Just then the amulet around Sacha's neck starts pulsing frantically; a disembodied woman's voice calls out to the group.  The voice sounds like it's coming from all around them.

Voice:  "Hellp me, Intronaut!  Only you can break the mummy's curse!"

The band looks all around them, startled.  They gather their wits and look around at each other, gathering strength from one another's strong visages and chiseled good looks.  Sacha announces:

Sacha:  "Well, you heard the lady!  Let's VAMOOSE!"

Marty the Spry Wondercar:  [from outside] "Oh nah you din't!"

The group laughs loudly

[Curtain]

That's just one small portion of the action, right before Joe Lester's big tapdancing number, which itself leads up to David's nude scene and subsequent soliloquy, which reveals one of his deepest secrets.

Electric!

You should go listen to this album, because it's really fucking good.  I imagine it's easy to steal, too, but I don't condone stealing music of this caliber.  You should just eat the dick and buy the fucking thing.

And if anyone from Intronaut actually reads this (they won't), I'd love an email to let me know how accurate I was for about the amulet and stuff.  It's hard to piece together meaningful research when you're trying to watch every episode of Archer back-to-back while shoveling potato chips into your mouth.  You know how it is.

Bison B.C.--Quiet Earth

As a subgenre, beard metal is probably my favorite of them all.  I love beard metal; it combines all sorts of strange and disparate elements to create something that is heavy and crusty to the utmost.  My favorite part about it is the beards, though.  You see, I am a model of near genetic perfection; the genes passed on to me from my parents are truly and utterly perfect in every way, save for one glaring flaw.  I can't grow a beard.  I have a full, lush head of hair that even the straightest man is attracted to, and I'm surprisingly nimble on my feet for a man who is as tall and burly as I am.  I have great big feet and indicate that I wear great big shoes, and my hands were built to play my guitar.  I'm a model of human perfection, a pasty white, slightly overweight Adonis with plenty of stretch marks and twice as much charisma.

But never a beard!  Oh, the agony of beardlessness!

I always like to imagine what I would do if I had a beard like many of my friends.  Oh what marvelously beardy adventures I would have, just me and my big, stinky beard.  We'd go to a Round Rock Express game
at the Dell Diamond and I'd dip my beard in a cup of beer to keep my face cool in the hot summer sun.  I'd use my beard to test produce at the grocery store, utilizing its fluffy, greasy tendrils to feel for ripeness and overripeness; an avocado would never slip through the cracks of my untrained fingers again, and I would never experience the dismay of having brought home an avocado that is already all brown and shit inside.  I AIN'T PUTTING THAT SHIT IN MY GUACAMOLE!

Birds and spiders would nest in my beard, becoming my army of nature that I would command and rule with an iron fist.  As future generations were born and raised in my beard, their allegiance to me would grow ever stronger; the newer generation would regard me as their mother, and then subsequently, some kind of lumbering Titanic god like from Greek mythology.  I would try to dissuade them from this view, but they wouldn't buy it.  After all, how did I get such a magnificent beard if I wasn't descended from the gods?  They would perhaps make a compelling argument, but my amazing humility would ignore it.

To dream.

For now I have to settle for what scant little facial hair I can grow (which is a pathetically small amount, which I tend to like some jerk who's growing a single daisy in a tiny pot in his office cubicle).  I offset this settling for little by listening to lots and lots of beard metal.  I love it.  And one of my favorites in the beard metal scene are Canadian wunderbeards Bison B.C.

Now it's true that only two members of Bison B.C. have beards.  I know this.  Don't let this relative lack of beards dissuade you from checking out the newest juggernauts of beard metal, though.  Bison B.C. is probably the band that I saw live the most times in a single year ever, and they also share the dubious honor of being the band that I saw the most times live without ever having listened to any of their recorded material.  I've listened to it lots now, but for the first couple of years (during which I saw them no less than 5 times live), I acknowledged that they were a great band that I enjoyed.  There were even shows that I went to to see Bison B.C. specifically, along with a series of slightly lesser bands that invariably comprised a very good bill.  But through all of this, I never listened to any of their recorded material until late last year.  And I'm glad that I bit the bullet and started buying music again so that I could give Bison some money of mine (I need to buy a shirt or two next time they're in town).

Quiet Earth was their first full lenth (probably.  I don't do research and can't now anyway, since I'm scrambling to finish this before I have to leave for work), and it totally rocks.  It's a sludgy amalgam of lumbering, doomy heaviness, midtempo swagger and thrashy, D-beat laden shredfests.  I particularly love the way Bison B.C. approach using guitar harmonies.  It's somehow more distinctive than the standard approach to harmony.  The riffs thunder and crush with harmonized melodic lines swelling up from underneath periodically, like some kind of oxygen-breathing sea beast rising from the depths to quickly eat an entire pelican, catch a breath, and then swim away.  Melody is woven into the fabric of the music, seemingly ubiquitous but only apparent at appropriate intervals.

Probably my favorite (and most shame-filled) part of the album is the song "Slow Hand of Death," which contains a riff that I wrote.  I'm not going to lie to you, though, and pretend like Bison B.C. ripped me off.  They didn't.  I wrote almost the exact same riff, in the same key, with the same palm muting and articulation (it's at 2:24 and again at the end, for those of you who want to hear it).  The problem is that I wrote the riff in a fit of inspiration that occurred roughly two years after this album was released, before I had heard the album proper but after I had seen them live several times.  Osmosis allows me to subconsciously steal riffs from bands that I thoroughly enjoy without the guilt of knowing that I lifted it note-for-note from part of their back catalog, from a song that I've likely heard live at least once and probably more times than that.

Which is another reason why I'm genetically superior.  Boom.

So if you're like me and you can't grow a beard but wish you could, start with Bison B.C.  Their brand of sludged up metal will trick your brain into sending signals to your face to make you feel like the bearded dynamo that you are inside (for future reference, being drunk also achieves this feeling, but adds a hyperinflated sense of self worth.  Incidentally, I recommend tying one on and then listening to Bison B.C. to achieve maximum beardness).

4/20 Double Feature--Cephalic Carnage

As everybody well knows, today is 4/20, which means that it's time for the most niche and risque day of celebration that this nation will put up with.  I'm talking about Hitler's birthday, of course, and though I don't celebrate Hitler's birthday myself (I don't like being reminded that I'm white, and am therefore to blame for most of the worst things that have ever happened since time began), I endure.

We all know that Stalin killed more people, but this is the face that has launched a million anti-Bush and anti-Obama propaganda campaigns.

 

However, tucked underneath the grim facade of this horrible day lies something much more wavy gravy.  Yes, it is most wavy gravy indeed.  I'm talking, of course, about the national day that people smoke marijuanas and spliffs and joints and jeezies and everything else that is a slang term for "marijuana" or "marijuana cigarette"  or "glass pipe with a little bowl area stuffed with marijuana for smoking."  You get the drift.

4/20 reminds us what's important, like standing on buildings, and crying bald eagles.  And Dimebag, obviously.  Also weed.

 

 In the spirit of this hallowed day that a surprisingly large percentage of people actually care about (I live in Austin, after all), I'm proud to bring you today's 4/20 Double Feature's inaugural installment, with the spotlight on my favorite stoner band, Colorado's Cephalic Carnage.

 

 

Cephalic Carnage are self-proclaimed "hydro-grind," which translates into non-stony-speak as "totally crunchy technical death metal, but our old stuff was way like grind...*takes a bong rip*...have you ever seen Red Dawn?"  And they are top-tier...whatever it is that's in quotation marks right there...of that you can be sure.  Let's take a big drag of our bleezy together....there we go....feels nice, right?  Right.  And let's take a look at a couple of my favorites.

Looking at this album art probably makes it clear that they are a very stony band, am I right?

 

I first fell in love with Cephalic Carnage's crunchy, off-kilter brand of hydro-grind about four years ago while I was still slaving away at my beer distribution job in smoggy Bakersfield, California.  During those days, I had lots and lots of disposable income and very few bills.  I would take my slow days at work and spend some extra time browsing the metal section of our most legit music retailer, FYE (Bakersfield sucks.  I'm sure you've seen this before if you've ever read anything else by me).  One day I was feeling saucy and decided that I would pick up something by a band that I had never actually listened to, and this is the album that I picked out.  My friend had one of their shirts, and I was jealous of how evil they were able to make Jesus look with a simple set of ram's horns, and I decided to see what all the hubbub was about.  Turns out, Xenosapien would change things for me.

Before I had heard Xenosapien, I always assumed that tech-death was restricted to meandering songs that drip with chronic note diarrhea and inexplicable vocals.  Turns out, as Xenosapien ably demonstrated, all they really need are inexplicable vocals.  The songs can have hooks and instantly memorable riffs, and even clean singing.

Clean singing!

Xenosapien is ripe with electricity that is hard to find in other albums.  There's so much to enjoy, from "Endless Cycle of Violence"'s massive opening riff to the final notes of "Ov Vicissitude" (I don't think either of those things are actual words) and through the hidden track at the end.  Oh how I love it!  So much disjointed heaviness!  Blastbeats abound!

It's heaven, really.

I waited patiently until 2010 for Cephalic's next effort, which came to me in the form of Misled by Certainty (which was, incidentally, my favorite album of 2010, through the eyes of one of my earliest writings).  I love this album.

 

Holy shit, what a follow up.  The effect of this album conjures images of Lenzig Leal and company riding giant, fire-spewing, motorized bongs through a post-apocalyptic wasteland and setting fire to whatever local wildlife was able to escape the holocaust, nuclear or otherwise, that led them to their current situation.  Actually, to be fair, I really just like to picture Leal flying around on a giant bong, riding it as if it were some kind of speeder bike, like from the Star Wars movies.

Dude, you have to hit this shit.  *Hits it*  Have you seen Robocop?

 

He and the rest of Cephalic Carnage travel around solving mysteries in this scenario.  At abandoned theme parks!

 

Misled by Certainty won my heart last year by virtue of the fact that it was such a powerful and decadently technical record that didn't sacrifice the songwriting for shreddy riffs and extended solo sections.  In fact, Cephalic managed to keep the record sounding pretty unified and totally solid from beginning to end.  I really love "A King and a Thief" because of the collapsing guitar riff that I've talked up before.  There are other amazing parts in there, also, like totally appropriate and acceptable clean singing and saxophone noodling.  Other hot cuts include "Abraxas of Filth," an intense sleigh ride through a landscape of bass tapping riffs and guitar noises that sound like Mario Brothers getting pulled into big green pipes on the NES, and "Ohrwurm," which has the most appallingly graphic and groaty music video I've ever seen.  Here it is!  But I warn you not to watch it for any reason, or else you'll be sorry.

 

I told you!

 

Didn't I just tell you not to watch it?

 

Gross!

 

But seriously, the album is amazing.  It makes me wish that I was a big conoisseur of the sticky-icky .  Don't get me wrong, however; I think that weed should be perfectly legal.  Whiskey costs a lot of money, and I have to drink a lot of it to get my sweet, sweet buzz on anymore!  And weed is cool, because everybody knows that smoking is the single coolest activity that a human can participate in, and smoking weed is even cooler because it makes the Harold and Kumar movies tolerable and allows certain members of the population to listen to Bob Marley records without shooting themselves in the face.  Interestingly, all of those people are white and have questionable haircuts.

So, this 4/20, I encourage you to have some fun without local law enforcement or your parents catching wind of it (Godspeed, 8===D!).  And make sure that your activities for tonight aren't in any way Hitler related.  People don't like things that are Hitler related.

Because fuck that guy.

Cut Your Teeth--CYTII

The interbung has revolutionized several aspects of our lives, some for the better, and some for the worse.  Example: most bands can't make an actual living playing music anymore.  We all know that stealing music is fun and easy, and I'm not going to preach one way or the other about the merits of supporting bands monetarily versus being able to listen to anything at any time.  Bo-ring!  On the same token, however, the Interhole has destroyed the necessity for great bands to have a label for non-local fans to be listening to them.  Enter Cut Your Teeth, New York's crossover kings, and perhaps the single band that I spend the most time listening to and writing up for this crappy website of mine (don't believe me?  Here, here, this current post, etc).

I credit myself personally with being Cut Your Teeth's first fan ever.  I know that's delusional and retarded, but if you read my first writeup, you'll notice that Patrick Lukens (I think) and I were shamelessly plugging, on Invisible Oranges, Cut Your Teeth and my not-actually-a-band band.  I went and listened to CYT first thing and was blown away.  There, for some reason I retold that story.  You're welcome.

Now, for the uninitiated, Cut Your Teeth are the original New York party worms.  They wear Hawaiian shirts and sunglasses round the clock I imagine, and they subsist solely on beer or other party-related beverages, many of them served with colorful umbrellas.

Four Loko made me do it, bitches!  Now LET'S PARTY!

 

Cut Your Teeth are the kind of band that you'd like to have playing your house party.  They're all about bringing the thunder and swilling things, and are the kind of band that would lead somebody to set your couch on fire in a well-intentioned but misguided show of enthusiasm for your sweet house party.

Such a hangover everybody would have the next day!

CYTII is an admirable--if poorly named--continuation of the band's first release, Cut Your Teeth.  To placate myself while I walk to work and stuff, I like to put both albums on back-to-back; it gives me the comforting illusion that there's one quite good and pretty-much-long-enough album rather than admitting that it's actually two that are too short to truly quench my thirst for songs about booze and telling women to fuck off.  There's something about Cut Your Teeth's brand of crossover thrash that really gets my heart pumping.  I suspect it has something to do with the massive D-boner strokeage inherent in most of their songs; there's also a nostalgia factor at play, since Cut Your Teeth would have been my group of friends' favorite band when I was in high school.  They'll have to settle for being one of my favorite bands now that I'm considerably older and crustier than I used to be.  Sorry guys.

Song wise, CYTII is a more than adequate match for their first EP; tasty riffs abound in songs like "Bum Wine and Tequila" and "T.W.H.W.Y.T.B."  Sweet solos are also readily available for those of us who are guitar obsessed fret-watchers; I once read in a writeup that Cosmo Lee of Invisible Oranges did that said he suspected Patrick Lukens of being a closet shredder.  Really?  I suspect Cosmo Lee is a closet writer, and that all this summer heat is coming from that big-ass bright thing what flies across the sky during the daytime.

Perhaps Cut Your Teeth's finest achievement with this new album, however, is "Stallion" and it's accompanying music video.  Do I think "Stallion" is the best song they've ever written?  No, but it's really good.  However, they've made a music video for it, and I can say with a high degree of certainty that it's the only music video I've watched all the way through in probably about 10 years.  I love headstock cameras and dizzying movement, and the video is ripe with those things.  Watch:

I've been piping on about these dudes for a while now.  If you've missed the boat up until now, I insist you stop being a turd and go download their albums, because they rule and are free.  Check out their Bandcamp page if you don't believe me.

And thank you, interwebbies.  Even though you distract me from doing important things with my life, you also distract me from reality, which is way better than being productive.