Mas Optica ‘Choose to See More’ (1993)

April 23, 2009

The few bits of press I can recall proclaimed Mas Optica as “acoustic metal” – which sounded intriguing enough (even though acoustic guitars are really nothing unusual in metal). So, I had imagined that the album must be entirely acoustic guitars…yet heavy…with no distortion and no effects, right? Not exactly. What you do get is […]

Read the full article →

Voivod ‘Angel Rat’ Sampler EP (1991)

April 19, 2009

This was another one of those lucky finds in the bargain bins – upon nabbing it, I didn’t expect that it would contain early mixes/pre-album rehearsals of ‘Angel Rat’ songs…but it surely delivered for the $2 spent. At that time, I didn’t have the resistance to ‘Angel Rat‘ that everyone else in metal seemed to […]

Read the full article →

Jeremy Enigk ‘The End Sessions’ (1995)

April 18, 2009

This is one of those ‘promo only’ CDs that I found in the bargain bins at a record store where I spent too much time during my teens & 20’s. I was just beginning to warm up to Sunny Day Real Estate; and I was very lukewarm toward frontman Enigk’s ‘Return of the Frog King’…so […]

Read the full article →

Kid Brother Collective

April 17, 2009

Sometimes it seems that there’s so much great music from Michigan artists, we can almost be forgiven for spawning Kid Rock. I like to think this state has some sort of magic in its soil: the incomparable Blind Willie McTell even spent some time here! Alongside the greatness of those ’90s Kalamazoo bands, there was […]

Read the full article →

Sacrilege ‘Turn Back Trilobyte’ (1989)

April 16, 2009

UK metal band Sacrilege was pretty much doomed to obscurity from the very start. They weren’t very glamorous, they weren’t particularly evil – and their origins as a crust punk band were markedly British. After two albums of moody, dark thrash which tended to bury Lynda “Tam” Simpson’s voice in the mix, Sacrilege basically re-invented […]

Read the full article →

Verbal Assault ‘Trial’ (1988)

April 15, 2009

In 1988, I was in high school – and I was also at that point in my youth when all i listened to was metal. Around that same time, I distinctly recall being the passenger in a friend’s car on a summer drive to nowhere – when we happened upon a hapless metalhead in a […]

Read the full article →

More ‘Heated Speech’

April 15, 2009

In a surprising turn of events, Culture Of None has been asked to “take down the blog” by Detroit rapper Shane Capone, who has been in almost constant rotation in our CD player since reviewing his album ‘Heated Speech’ last month. What seemed to ruffle his pimp feathers the most was that I’d expressed dismay […]

Read the full article →

Dawnfall ‘Drei Raume’ (2002)

April 14, 2009

It starts off like the basement recording of an awkward, aspiring jam-metal trio: The guitar loops through an odd scale run over and over, like some fingering practice pattern from yesterday’s lesson. The sonic ambience is part Hellhammer, part early Bathory – with the looming threat of free jazz explosion at any second. If you […]

Read the full article →

Another great ‘Record Day’ at the thrift…

April 9, 2009

I actually went to the Salvation Army store today in hopes of buying a button-down shirt I’d seen there last week… but the shirt was gone. There were, however, many surprises in the record bins. It looked like someone’s entire collection of late ’60s/early ’70s stuff had been donated. There was some Rod McKuen, some […]

Read the full article →

April 1, 2009

Surely most of us have experience with vending machine capsule toys. The machines are usually stacked in the entranceway of grocery stores & convenience shops. They’ve remained pretty much the same as I recall them 30 years ago: you put in a quarter, and hope that your randomly dispensed capsule contains one of the cooler […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →