Welcome To Stopgap City.

Blah blah preamble blah blah. Does anyone even read this fucking thing? I'm busy recording today so I'm just gonna skip this... - Slimelord - Killer sludgy death from the depths of some dank, moldy, basement somewhere. Excessive reverb gives this one a really gross humid vibe which is something I pretty much always dig. - Thorns of the Carrion - Doomy blackened/ atmospheric DM circa 94, huge favorite of mine back when I was in high school. Dusted it off earlier this week and it’s been in pretty heavy rotation ever since. Their second album went in a more gothic/ funeral doom/ black metal direction, but it's still pretty decent if you're in the right mood. - Sanity's Dawn - Gore splattered German death/ grind topped off with what have gotta be some of the most demented vocals ever recorded. If you dig stuff like Regurgitate you’ll fucking love this. - Dahmer - Man, I hadn’t though of Dahmer in a minute, but came across this disc while I was moving my shelves aro...

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...

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 b...

So, we’re pretty realistic about the fact that maybe like four people on earth actually listen to our music. Like seriously, there’s four. I can name them. But man… Those four people are gonna shit when the new tracks hit bandcamp and they realize we’ve turned into a hulking mutated gene splice of early SWANS, White Mice, and Impetuous Ritual. And that’s about all the preamble I’ve got today. Oh yeah, one other thing worth mentioning, I’m gonna start writing about movies now too. I don’t always have time to watch one every day, but when I do I’ll make a quick note of it. - Muzak: Eyes of Fire - So, I saw these guys with Trivium, Danzig and Kataklysm ages ago. 2004 maybe? Or was it 2005? The exact date is now lost to the grey fog that is slowly consuming my mind, but what I do remember is that I wasn’t feeling all that well that day (recovering from a severe bout of food poisoning the night before), and my then-girlfriend dumped me in the car during the drive to the show. Turns out sh...

Wellp. Vacation is over and we're back to the grind. Upside is that we had a real nice break and unexpectedly wound up jamming out a bunch of new tracks... Downside is that we now have slightly fewer hours per day to finish hammering them into shape. So it goes. - Dhwesha - Gnarly DM from India with a real dark/ eerie vibe. Had never heard of Dhwesha before this track popped up on autoplay after something else I was listening to, but I wound up really digging them. So much so that I listened to the whole album twice then picked up a copy of the CD. - Necrot - I know these guys are a big deal, but for whatever reason I never picked up any of their albums until just the other day. Grabbed all three last time we hiked out to Vinyl Altar and they definitely live up to the hype. Mid-tempo to fast, dissonant but not incoherent, riffy as hell, great vox... I'm into it. - Krosis - "New School" DM seems like it has fallen out of favor super fucking hard over the past bunch ...

Well shit. I forgot to deactivate the ability to pay for our albums when our old band called it quits, and upon logging into our bandcamp for the first time in a long time I noticed that a decent little handful of people actually paid for the album we never finished? Which I guess means we're half-ass obligated to finish it. Thanks a lot assholes... Seriously though, this actually did happen completely by mistake, but after 16 years I'm not gonna end our run as one of those bands that take in (even a small amount of) money for an album that doesn't get released. So we're gonna do something. Whether or not anyone likes that something, listens, or gives a fuck? Eh, that's honestly not our problem. Hell, maybe this whole dumb experience will "revitalize" us and we'll decide to keep toiling in obscurity? Who knows. Only thing we know for semi-certain is that all the rest of the songs on the album are gonna have full-on drums/ guitar/ vox and kinda tap into...

I'll have you know that, whenever this winds up getting posted, it was actually finished EARLY. Still on vacation so not gonna bother with much in the way of a preamble, just a real quick mention that when I walk down the street or go into a store and see people wearing COVID masks but pulled down around their chin it makes me want to fucking scream. What the fuck? It's like taking the time to wear pants but hiking them down so your ass and crotch are flapping in the breeze. Like at that point what's the fucking plan? There's zero benefit and and probably significant discomfort. You're literally getting the worst of both worlds. - Federation X - I can't tell you much about this band, just that I was sent three of their albums as freebies with some other stuff I ordered years ago and that they sorta reminded me of a punky version of big dumb American Rawk 'n' Roll ala ZZ Top which is something I tend to dig when I'm working or working out. Feels like...

Took yesterday off because I'm on vacation. Keeping this preamble short because like I said: I'm on vacation. If you need anything else: Please refer to my previous statements about being on vacation. - Acephalix - Saw these guys a bunch of times when we lived in the Bay Area and I dig pretty much everything they've done, but man Aporia is the one I always come back to. Especially that last track. Crusty and fucking Massive. - Pink Mass - Necrosexual New Jerzy skuzzkult. About as pleasant as hatefucking a ruptured abscess. - Autopsy - I slept on the more recent Autopsy albums for a looooong time. Knew they existed. Knew they were probably good. Just never quite got around to actually listening to them. Finally picked up the three most recent full-lengths and I've been listening over the past couple days. They all do pretty much what you'd want/ expect an Autopsy album to do and I'm a dope for not checking them out sooner. - Mayhem - Real talk: I don't gi...

I'm technically on vacation, so no preamble today... Except for a vague warning that I was in a pretty 80's mood yesterday. - E-Force - Ex-Voivod "Negatron/ Phobos" era frontman doing his own thing. "His own thing" being fairly unique sounding thrash that while maybe not as flipped out as Voivod, is still pretty killer in its own right. - Trouble - First four Trouble albums are untouchably unfuckwithable in every way. Perfect fusion of Sabbath-y doom, 80's trad metal, and thrash. Super bummed to hear of Eric Wagner's passing.  - Warrior Soul - The band that kinda of bridged the chasm between hair metal and grunge, and unfortunately wound up getting largely snoozed on by both sides. I've wanted to do a death/ grind/ doom cover of this tune since like 1997. - Souls At Zero - I bought both of these albums out of a bargain bin at this tiny little record store in suburban MA when I was a freshman in high school. Still have them to this day. I get ...