GAD! Zine

    There's been a lot of killer music coming out this year. So much so, in fact, that I'm having a difficult time narrowing down my faves. A "Top 10" list feels impossible to manage. How can one pack so many different sounds and ideas into such an arbitrary number? I very nearly flaked out on writing this article, an assignment that I'd made up for myself in the first place. But then I looked at this idea from a different angle. As much as I moan and fuss over making such a tight list, it's actually easier the smaller the list gets. "Top 4" is waaaay less effort to work out than "Top 10", and not just because it would, in theory, be less than half the writing. It's just so much simpler to figure out my 4 by looking at the 2017 CDs still living in my car. These discs continue to be the soundtrack to my travels and I imagine they will continue to be well into 2018. #4 Trash Cats - Wardcore This is a nasty little band that just seem

The perfect cover.     Now, this is my kinda Christmas album! Owls & Other Animals and The Trash Cats (the other other animals??) have teamed up to deliver us a perfect soundtrack for shoving the ol' plastic tree into the fireplace and sitting back and inhaling the fumes. These folks send up the seasonal standards in a fragile, vulnerable lo-fi acoustic set. Whisper-crooning classics like "White Xmas" in a tunnel of introspection. Beauty in the shaky basics. Raw. Another kinda raw is the hellbent hollerin' version of "Grandma Got Run Over" that ain't for the kiddies. Or the adults. Chaos. Hilarity. It is rare to find a holiday release so wobbly, stripped down, schizophrenic, and.... honest. This is what real and interesting people have playing in the background when they laugh and cry and spill their drinks and spill their guts. I dunno who's idea it was to put these two groups together, but what they have created is nothing short of a Chri

    Haven’t had the pleasure to catch this trio live (YET), but they are no doubt a ton of sleazy fun. And maybe a bit of introspection. Alcoholic Appalachian acoustic crust-punk. Not so much cowpunk. More like hillbilly gutterpunk. And kinda um... satanic. Briscoe Darling hocked a loogie on a pet cemetery during a full moon. That snot grew a brain, picked up a guitar, and started singing his heart out. To recap: Mucous grew a brain AND a heart, but the heart is gone, because he sang it out. The bass is deep and sad and as real as an AA meeting. And... Hey, where are the drums? No drums. Washboard. Because fuck you. -Harmless    Trash Cats on Bandcamp Trash Cats on Facebook

    Eyes On Lips have just released a new concept album. Wait! A concept album?? Yup. As a band, these guys have definitely progressed as musicians since their earlier recordings. And they’ve always been great. Now, coming into their own with a more overt math rock influence, they’ve wisely recruited Pace House’s Paul Costa to take the production reins. EOL have traded a bit of the lo-fi charm of previous recordings for an overall cleaner, but richer, sound. And it works! These lunatics ooze personality, in their over-the-top performances, in their weird-but-kinda-deep songwriting, and in their... uhh... a description-with-even-more-hyphens! And now we can really hear all the crazy crap they're doing. As the album is (sorta) about a theme park, each tune (kinda) represents a different ride, with titles like "Bumper Cart Coffin" and "Ferris Squeal". Tempo-changes and jazzy rambling from kids musically smarter than myself (doesn't take much) are a frequent

    Brad Norris holds a special place in my heart as literally one of the best live frontmen I’ve ever seen. I once borrowed his mic at a show and the poor little thing was so beaten and battered, I shed a tear. The emaciated microphone quickly lapped up that tear, and we cried dryly on the barroom floor together for ten minutes. Either that, or the crippled little bastard shocked me into a coma and I dreamed the whole thing. He's an epic dangerous preacher man slinging his device like a yo-yo. Some folks probably still whisper, “That’s the dude from Norma Jean”. I, on the other hand, scream constantly and consistently every day, “That’s the guy from the Divine Shakes!!!!”. Now he’s back with other local-loco legends, Jacob Ragan (Divine Shakes/Russian Love Machine/Tiger Helicide), Jared Loyd (Russian Love Machine/TRME/Boo Radley’s Bones/Tiger Helicide) and Nate Glenn (Boo Radley’s Bones, The Dry Holler). This is kinda my dream band. A super-duper group. Jacob and Jared have been

    All Deep Ends is the brainchild of Dakota Gilliland, a kind of indie-pop would-be wunderkind from Alabama. Thoughtful, idiosyncratic lyrics elevate his work, I'd argue, beyond even a few of his likely influences. Whether or not he's aware, he's on a bit of a quest. He's reinventing pop(punk) for his bedroom headphones. Here's the rub: In attempting to describe exactly what he does, I'm likely to scare off folks with my own particular tastes. But that's the point. He does it sooooo right. Acoustic folk launches into jangly full-band electric and back with almost-nasally melodies throughout. Modern emo needs this. This is how it should be. If you're familiar with previous works of this band, I think you'll be impressed with the evolution of Dakota's voice. He was a terrific genre singer before. Now he's coming into his own. As for the overall sound of this record, it is all achingly personal. Even the lighter stuff. Even the "dumber

    "Industrial supergroup" Primitive Race is back! And... not quite as industrial as before. The core of Chris Kniker (the very productive producer), Mark Thwaite (Spear of Destiny/The Mission/Peter Murphy/Tricky), and Erie Loch (Wiccid/Luxt/Blownload) return and are joined by Chuck Mosley (Faith No More/Bad Brains/Cement) on vocals and Dale Crover (Melvins/Nirvana/Altamont) on drums. Needless to say, this album is more raw and consistent than their self-titled 2015 full-length debut, which I also highly recommend. The group has aimed in a different direction and is reborn as a full-on rock band to be reckoned with. But there is a surprising side-effect: on Soul Pretender, Primitive Race's killer post-punk skills combine with Crover's legendary pounding and prove to be the perfect backdrop for something of a Chuck Mosley renaissance.     The album opens with "Row House", a peculiar thick alterna-tune that's crunchy and kinda off-kilter, followed by

 That new Queens Of The Stone Age record answers a question everyone is afraid to ask, and for good reason: What if aliens watched a lot of Grindhouse and Russ Meyer flicks, and basically found a spot next to the MST3K crew in the theatre, then went to church, then came home and ate spaghetti and wrote a record, after one more spaghetti western? Thankfully, the human race will never have to broach the subject as a species, because the planetary patriots informally known as “QOTSA”, led by General Josh Homme, have made this theoretical, hypothetical nightmare into a nine-track album equivalent to those fear mongering nuclear war training newsreels. It’s some “Reefer Madness” in an era where we have an Attorney General who sees that piece of cinematic chicanery as an instructional video or that video you have to watch when you take Drivers Ed (where they make sure to get close-ups on all the charred corpses inside the twisted wreckage) rather than “Gone With The Wind”. (See what I did t

    The Go-Go Killers only could've come from one of two places: Huntsville, Alabama or Planet Fuck. Though I've bared witness to their ritualistic sleaze-church shenanigans multiple times in the Rocket City, a reliable source (their new CD) has informed me that they are, in fact, Fuckian immigrants. They've just spent so much time wrecking and rolling through the Southeast, becoming legends in the process, that we've come to adopt them as our own. As one may attempt to adopt a sick wild animal... and inevitably get bitten. Hallucinogenitalia, their double album, is a culmination of all things "wreck 'n' roll". Subversive and nasty and haunted. 13 Alabama Ghost and Jeffrey meets Peoples Temple meets Blood Feast. They nod to past legends like the Cramps but pave their own way as a uniquely southern phenomenon. As musicians, few can hope to come close to the prowess and straight-up experience of this quartet. The band is as tight as a noose, even when

    Got “turnt” onto this band by Brad Posey, host/curator/creator of THE INVISIBLE CITY on 89.3 WLRH out of Huntsville, Alabama, and all-around swell guy (when he isn’t using thousands of people as test subjects for his droning experiments-choice emoji goes here, lol). He baited me by using The Replacements as an adjective to describe the lyrical style of this band, and I’m a sucker for anything Paul Westerberg connected. You could tell me a porta potty at a BBQ competition in the dead of a southern summer reminded you of “Tim” and I’d be there waiting for another spiritual awakening. But these dudes are from Dallas, so there may not be such a large degree of separation between plastic crap coffins and our favorite intermittently-sober subconsciously self-sabotaging lore-infused underground rock 'n' roll religious figures after all.     This is a pissed off record. It’s sarcastic. It’s wounded, and it’s mad as hell and isn’t gonna take it anymore. But it kind of reminds you

Originally published in GAD! Zine Issue 5. Interview by Harmless GAD! Who are you and what is YOUR history? Ian Wise - I grew up in Birmingham. I got into punk through the Ramones when I was about 9 and during middle school I didn’t really know anyone that was interested in the things I was. There were some other kids that were vaguely into punk rock but they were all older than me and I didn’t have any friends with interests like mine. Granted, I was very young and even though the internet was around I pretty much only had access to it at school so it was hard to find out about current bands. I would pretty much buy punk CDs and then track down releases by other bands listed in the “thank you” section of the CDs. Sometimes I’d get a record and the insert would have a collage of flyers from shows the band had played, and that was always great because it gave me more names of bands to look for when I was digging through records. I was able to get into some great stuff thro

    Sometimes it’s fun to imagine alternate realities for clearly defined entities, historical eras, and so on. Like, I found myself wondering: “What if the music of MUSE was sexier?" "More slithery and reptilian?” “What if The Black Keys were from Gotham City?” “If Artic Monkeys weren’t so spastic and British*?” or the one question that almost woke me up at night more than once: “What if Radiohead weren’t so dreadfully boring?” (A rock and roll antihistamine?) Then I got this EP in the mail. And I went…."oooohhhh…" This is good. REALLY good. It’s the kind of good that pisses you off, because you know it’s inevitably going to cause you to judge the rest of the albums you acquire against it. And it’s only five tracks. It’s like getting interrupted in the middle of the one-man slap fight: you’re about to send a few thousand little soldiers on a suicide mission, then BAM! Its gets called off, the freeway gets backed up, but the rocket is still ready to launch

    In the latest issue of the GAD! zine, I reviewed A Very Loud Death's new full-length, "Lanterns". Below is the review as it appears in Issue 15.... Short and sweet. Well, now I kinda want to say a little more. First of all, these fuckers are deceptive. They walk you in with some cool ambiance and follow it with some whispery/emo-y alt-metal that starts dipping into mad laughter. The vocals become a tad unhinged. The music becomes a teetering crooked carousel. Hardcore hollering makes a brief appearance. More whispering. Reverb. Crunching guitar. Swinging drums. The bass just snuck into my right ear and got a little too close to my brain. Was that just some Dick Dale-esque guitar noodling?? Now they're marching. Yet, most of this thing is... mellow? Is it the reverb and effects that are confusing me? This recording is a mystery. I think this is what I was trying to get at before. You're gonna think you've heard this before, but it's richer and

         Chuck Mosley is best-known as the singer of Faith No More during their early ascent, but has been involved in multiple projects over the years, most notably a stint with the Bad Brains and his own band Cement. When an auto accident during Cement's second album tour derailed his music career, Chuck took several years to recuperate and focus on his family. He formed a new band, VUA, but was, for the most part, a family man with a "real" job. Chuck made his comeback, however, with 2009's underrated/underpromoted album, Will Rap Over Hard Rock For Food. Since that time, he hasn't gone away. In the intervening years, he's put out Demos For Sale (demos and rarities from WROHRFF), released a couple of digital singles, guest-performed live with FNM a few times, celebrated the rerelease of their first album, We Care A Lot, played guitar in and sang for Douglas Esper's band Indoria, recorded with Primitive Race, and has been doing a "low key"

With Jane Pistol NEW ALBUM: 'Buscando Provocar Jane Pistol: ​Is Alkoholemia more of a punk band or metal or a combination? ALKOHOLEMIA: That’s tough to accurately answer, some might say one thing or the other….we feel we’re not just simply plain punk since we include the whole variety of our different influences...we’re brutally different, actually….so there goes the “recipe”....we don’t necessarily need a genre tag, we know we have punk vibe, though….and when it comes to metal, in our case it’s a bit more precise to refer to hard rock, rather than metal itself... JP: Lyrically your songs seem to convey a message at times. How much of the song-writing is based on personal experiences and social and political things? ALKOHOLEMIA: Since the lyrics writing process is really spontaneous and not methodically established as a series of steps, there’s plenty of issues to deal with in the lyrics...some refer to our local, national everyday reality, one or two deal with polit

  An Interview by Adam Harmless    “Used to, I would have dreams about meeting a hero or having everything be a cakewalk once you made your “hit”, but as an artist, you grow and mature and learn that music is so much more sacred. It’s such a higher power than to simply want to be famous. I make music for my own self-consumption nowadays… My motivation is to attempt to continue to push my own limits and create something beautiful from it.”     Growing up, Owen Nye's dad introduced him to the music of KISS and Pink Floyd, while his mom shared a love of Prince and Michael Jackson with her son. Owen credits them with his early taste and interest in music. Today, under the moniker of "Owen Ni", he continues to voraciously search for and consume interesting sound. As soon as one speaks with Owen Ni, it’s becomes abundantly clear how passionate he is about music and his philosophy toward his own music, which he at first describes as “electronic”. He quickly elaborates, “S