Welcome To Stopgap City.

Been jamming around with the Octatrack, TR-808, Model: Cycles, Guitar, and Moog. Sounds pretty rad. Still really digging the idea of doing something that sounds like the cold/ weird side of techno meets tribal drumming and the distant/ ambient parts of metal. Other than that, not much to report, I keep almost pulling the plug on this site because hardly anyone is reading, but like most things I keep on keeping on because it beats just sitting around watching TV. - Lewd - Every time I bring up Lewd it seems like people think I mean the old punk band, but no... This is the monstrous early 90's mechano-dirge Lewd from The Netherlands. Fans of SWANS, Pain Teens, and Zeni Geva definitely take note if you’re not already familiar. Side note: One of these guys (I think it was the singer?) did a couple pretty cool harsh noise/ power electronic type albums under the name DMDN back in the day. There was one called “Sling Trip” on RRR Records that I might actually still have on one of my shel

Had a dream that DD and I were in a band that sounded like gloomy black metal/ industrial doom wrapped in tons of Autechre/ Gas/ Aes Dana/ Burial/ Echospace/ Aphex Twin style atmospherics and now I kinda wanna try to make that happen. I also had a dream that we had a friend named Vanessa who took us to get apple cider donuts at a farmers market out in the country somewhere then wound up getting eaten by donkeys so who the fuck knows what is going on with my brain anymore. - Dodheimsgard - 666 International and Supervillain Outcast are probably my #1 and #2 favorite black metal albums of all time. Pulled both out recently and they still absolutely rule. I thought that the cold "futuristic" vibe that those early 00's Moonfog bands tapped into was so fucking cool back when I was 18. - Thorns - If DHG occupies the top two spots on my theoretical list of favorite black metal albums, then Thorns probably occupy #3. I listened to the absolute shit out of this CD back in the ea

Short post today cos my ADHD is making it really hard to sit still and I kind of woke up with a headache. Might go take a walk, blow off some steam, and see if it helps. - Lungfish - There are days when I wake up and I'm just completely fucking over it in terms of noise or metal... Hate the people. Hate the gatekeeping. Hate the OCD collector mentality. Hate the thinly veiled nazi shit. Hate the cooler than thou posturing. Just wanna walk away from the whole thing and get a cabin out in the fucking woods somewhere.  On days like that I tend to pull the plug, listen to a bunch of punk and garage type stuff, and Lungfish usually winds up heavily factored into that rotation.  - Dead Moon - Portland garage/ punk legends. I never cared for these guys when I was younger, but now I really dig them. Especially some of their gloomier tunes like "Dead in the Saddle" and "I Tried." - Nash the Slash - I've written about this guy in the past cos he's a huge favori

Don't have much of a preamble today, but man, the Elektron Model: Cycles sounds fucking rad... Need to read the manual and dig a bit deeper into the sequencer but already feeling like we can definitely use this thing. sounds killer against pitched down scrap metal hits and clickity-clackity Big Black style drum patterns off the 707. - Galvanizer - Hey! Do you like that 90's German band Blood? Cool, you'll fucking love this... Covers pretty similar ground to Christbait/ O Agios Pethane/ Mental Conflicts, with the main difference being the slightly raspier vocals here, and the fact these guys are from Finland not Germany. - Fatum Elisum - Woozy funeral doom with just a touch of "suicidal" black metal, music reminds me of Bethlehem, My Dying Bride, and maybe a bit of Reverend Bizarre thrown in a blender... Singer has a weird range slipping from growls into snarls and more often than not into off-key clean singing that sorta sounds like a cross between Lee Dorrian

Insomnia, anxiety, loneliness and depression have been kicking my ass RELENTLESSLY for the past month and a half. Seems like all I can do is keep on keeping on and hopefully eventually stagger my way to the other side of whatever brain-chemical coolatta is causing my current distress. Seriously though, it sucks when you wake up one morning and realize you’re middle aged, 9/10 of your friends are gone, and the rest are people you email once every four to six months. Oh well, on the upside we picked up one of those Elektron Model: Cycles things and it sounds fucking rad. - Keukhot - Truly bizarre electronic whatthefuck from Finland. This may or may not wind up being "your thing" but I guarantee you've never heard anything quite like it. - Kriminaaliset Metsanhaltijat - Ferocious scrap metal scraping anarcho power-electronics from Finland. - Goatpsalm - Spaced-out tribal/ ambient/ black/ doom that I picked up at random because the CD was two bucks and it's on a label

Blahblahblah: Well, I finally gave facebook the 'ol pressure-bolt. Feels weird, but man... Seeing all the crazy antivaxx, anti-science, and he-man patriotic/ religious/ anti-abortion "fuck your feelings" bullshit that was popping off on my feed non-stop made it pretty clear it was long past time to grab my coat and head out. There's nothing to "promote" anymore (as if that's even possible on that fucking platform), there's no one to keep up with, and the whole thing had just kind of devolved into watching people I only kind of knew in high school line up for their chance to compete in the Herman Cain olympics. So now what? I guess I'm gonna keep going with this site. Probably gonna do some renovations, try to make things a little more presentable over the next little while, maybe even attempt a couple interviews, but generally just keep on doing what I've been doing. And seriously, I hate that this needs to be said but I feel like it does bec

Band stuff: Been really digging in and trying to get better at writing coherent drum parts… still very much a work in progress, but the improvement is starting to show both in the actual beats and in getting them to sit in a mix. Gonna spend the next week or two focusing on fills and transitions. Plan is that our next album is gonna be full-on black metal/ doom with elements of industrial/ harsh noise/ ambient/ and tribal drumming. Kind of a nod to what we were doing waaaaaay back in the day when DD and I first met and we were playing in a band called DOTS. Oh yeah, I also just started working on the first set of lyrics I’ve written in a bunch of years. Which I guess means the new album is probably gonna have vocals. - Muzak: Old Man’s Child - Mid-tier black metal from a guy who I guess is also in Dimmu Borgir. This is one of those albums where I tend to throw it on less for the music and more for the memories of people and places that the music is wrapped up with. I dunno... The area

Sure drum machines have no "soul" or whatever, but you know what they beat the absolute shit out of? Every single drummer I've ever played with... They don't whine, the don't cancel practice, and if you accidentally leave one blasting for 24 hours straight they don't collapse and die. Anyway, I listened to music today... - Khost - Heaviest band on earth continues to be heaviest band on earth. - Tzompantli - What if Mortician was a doom band? What if they swapped the horror samples out for rain sticks and those weird flutes that sound like they're screaming? What if they sang about ancient Mayan culture which is probably the most Mortal Kombat of all cultures to sing about? It'd fucking rule that's what...  - Primitive Knot - Crusty drum machine powered Killing Joke meets Motorhawkwind? Christ, it's like someone peered into my subconscious and created literally the exact thing I've always wanted to hear. - Aeternum Infinitus - Creeped ou

Took a couple days off because we were busy recording stuff for the next THNGRVD album and I was feeling completely uninspired to write much of anything... Back today, despite the fact inspiration is still at terminally low-ebb. Oh well, habit over motivation. Honestly, you know why it's hard to write lately? Because I've spent the past fucking decade sorting through my bad mental wiring and learning it's better to work on shit I can control than bitch about shit I can't. So, when I'm bummed out or pissed off I'm usually heads-down working on music. And that's where I'm at mentally so that's what I'm doing. If you really wanna hear about it (you don't), the album will be out eventually. - Antigama  - Futuristic tech-grind from Poland. Heavy dose of Voivod-inspired guitar mangle puts this stuff in a pretty different zone than most bands that do a similar thing. - Corrections House  - Mike Williams from Eyehategod, Scott Kelly from Neurosis, an

Took yesterday off ‘cos we were running some errands then working on music. Back today. - Luke Schneider - Spaced-out ambience ala Fripp and Eno or Stars of the Lid channeled via pedal steel guitar and what I have to assume is an entire assload of EFX pedals. Great album to wake up and drink coffee to. - Steve Von Till - I liked the newest Steve Von Till album well enough, but I like this alternate instrumental/ ambient version of the material even better. - Bathory - A while back I saw a video of some dude doing a crazy piano arrangement of One Rode to Asa Bay and I’ve been on kind of a Bathory kick ever since. - Dusk - Mid 90s death/ doom from Wisconsin. - Ossuarium - I spent most of the past couple years not buying much in the way of new music so I’ve been catching up on some of the stuff I missed lately. This Ossuarium stuff is killer. Gnarly DM with just enough speed to make the downshifts into chunking chugging doom feel like a long fall into an open sewer. Heavy. Gross. thu

Man, 20 years since 9/11. Feels like a lifetime ago but I guess I still remember where I was when it went down... Living and working a shitty construction job out in the MA burbs. Boombox we had at the job site was tuned to WBCN. Howard stern was doing his morning show thing. Then the planes hit. Then the towers fell. Stern sounded rattled and signed off and the radio cut to some emergency broadcast thing. My boss came over and asked what was up with the radio and I told him that two planes had just hit the Twin Towers. He looked at me like I was fucking with him, made a couple phone calls, came back looking spooked, and told us all to pack it in for the day. I asked him what was up and he said his daughter worked right near the towers and he couldn't reach her. Caught a lift with him back to the company office/ garage thing, where my car was parked... He kept slamming on the steering wheel muttering "Fuck man, Fuck!" under his breath. I went home, hit a shower, called hi

Got some sleep last night... Still feel pretty shaky, but I'm hanging in there. Sleep helped. Food will probably help. Might take a walk... We'll see. - Dirge - Super heavy Aztec themed melodic Sludge/ Death from Mumbai India. First impression of this was that the desperate raspy vocals sorta reminded me of Cult of Luna/ Heaven Shall Burn which is not at all what I was expecting based on the description. But holy crap... Some of the riffs on this thing are fucking massive... Almost winds up sounding like the bastard child of Eyehategod and Bolt Thrower with a hint of the above mentioned Cult of Luna and the occasional Crowbar style melodic lead thrown down over top.  Yeah, damn. This album is way better than I expected. Great bass tone too, whenever it manages to peek out through the din. Might wanna rethink the name though guys. Since there’s been a French band operating under the name Dirge for like 20 years now… - Xolotl - Rip-roaring Mayan themed black metal with some of

What's that one Fistula lyric? Something like: "Surprise! I feel like shit again today!" Yep. That pretty much sums things up right now... Not sleeping well and it's definitely taking a toll mentally and physically. Fucked up nightmares non-stop. Depression. Anxiety. Paranoia. And kind just wanna be held while I cry, but I'm six foot two and two hundred and fifty pounds of pissed-off space-viking so I'm expected to be strong and maintain. So I do. So I will. So it goes. - U-Men - I’ve always heard that the U-Men albums pale in comparison to their live sets, but they called it quits when I was like 9 years old so I guess the albums are gonna have to do. Killer noisy/ gothy/ punky skronk that is probably about as close as a band from the US has ever come to sounding like The Birthday Party. - Moura - Awesome, folky, "retro" doom from Spain with sort of a Mutterlein/ Los Natas/ Pink Floyd/ Galloping Coroners thing happening... My friend Rennie hipped

Man, I went to bed with a fucking epic preamble/ rant rattling around my head, but it was gone by the time I woke up...  I think it probably boiled down to this: My various traumas and mental illnesses make it super difficult/ uncomfortable for me to trust people and/ or make friends, but there will always be just enough bullshit to make my paranoia seem like a totally valid survival mechanism. Grateful for the few that have chosen to share this road with me. - Light - Less depressive black metal/ ambient/ funeral doom and more a field recording of a battle to the death between a pterodactyl and a particularly melodic vacuum cleaner. I fucking love these albums. - Wyrding - Ok, imagine Skepticism's Stormcrowfleet with the distortion dialed way down, recorded even further from whatever block of concrete the microphones were buried under, and fronted by the ghost of Pete Steele. It felt like these guys were destined for "next big thing" status when this album came out, bu

Ugh. That's all I've got today. Just fucking ugh. Bad dreams last night. Back hurts. Really missing dead friends. Ugh. - Kool Keith/ Hieroglyphics - If it ever seems like I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to say about the Hip-Hop stuff I listen to it’s honestly just because I don’t feel particularly well qualified to write about it. I just kind of like what I like. Case in point here. - Moor Mother - Moor Mother is from here and a couple years ago I’m pretty sure I saw her on a SEPTA platform… Wanted to say hey and tell her I really dig her music but in the end I wussed out. - Water Torture - Hey, my headache seems to be doing better. Let's see what we can do to bring it back... How bout some ultra bass heavy powerviolence? 10 minutes. No survivors. - +HIRS+ - Probably tied with Starkweather as my favorite Philly band. Ripshit drum machine grind. - No Gang Colors - Six and a half minutes of fucking berserk grind/ powerviolence. - Absinthe - Chaotic hardcore from AZ c

No one asked but we're not in the part of Philly that flooded, nor the part that got hit by a huge tornado, so I guess there's no reason for me to skip a day. - Muzak: Opium Warlords - One man doom from Albert Witchfinder of Reverend Bizarre. This track starts out in Om, Pink Floyd, and Crow Tongue/ Stone Breath hypno-folk-dirge territory then kicks in all monolithic and heavy about half way through. - Albatwitch - Mentioning Stone Breath just now reminded me that I hadn't listened to Albatwitch in a while. Weirdo doom/ folk/ noise/ black metal from the Stone Breath guy and (I think?) one of the guys from The Owls Are Not What They Seem. Anti-corporation rural doomsday cult vibes. - The Owls Are Not What They Seem - Massive backwoods ritual black/ drone/ doom. These guys were probably my pound for pound favorite band on earth back in 2016, but then I took a years-long break from music and they kind of slipped through a crack in my brain... Listening to that Albatwitch al

I had this whole long preamble written but then I realized most of it boiled down to just bitching about flaky people and honestly who fucking cares? Sometimes people flake out. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes you spend five years and learn to play drums mostly because you’re pissed at someone who flaked on playing drums for you. End of the day you just do your thing, try not to get bitter, and keep pushing forward because it beats doing whatever the fuck other “grown ups” do. - Muzak: Lebenden Toten - Noise damaged crust from PDX. All their stuff is varying degrees of rad but this 12” is something really special... Sounds absolutely catastrophic. - Blood Incantation - Totally fucking bent “cosmic” DM from Colorado. Kinda does the Gorguts/ Incantation/ Immolation dissonant thing that is so popular right now, but I hear a lot of Death (FL) and Monstrosity in this stuff too. I definitely get the hype, they're really good. - Jesus of Nazareth - It takes a whole lot for me

Just got the first really good night of sleep that I’ve been able to pull down in quite literally a couple of weeks, so I’m actually well rested for a change. Had really strange dreams. Now I’m up, and drinking a cup ‘o’ joe.  Rain in the forecast which is nice. Tornado warning which is maybe slightly less nice. Might walk to the record store later? Still in the grips of a weeks-long death metal bender. Not much else to report this morning. - Muzak: Lecherous Nocturne - Dark 'n' Brutal DM from South Carolina. One of those bands I never think of unless they pop up on shuffle, but I seem to have bought all their albums over the years so I guess I like them well enough?  - Disgorge - There was a lot of good natured disagreement amongst my small circle of high school metalhead friends as to whether Disgorge (Mex) or Disgorge (US) was the better band. The correct answer is obviously that both bands absolutely rule. That said, my personal favorite was always Disgorge (US) mostly be