Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Sapremia - With Winter Comes Despair




Sapremia are a death metal act that's been around since the early '90s. They aren't signed and they aren't world famous, but they are a highly respected band; I've heard praise firsthand from a member of Deicide. The singer/bassist, Lou Ferrara, is a good friend of my brother's band Nightfire, and he regularly comes out to support Nightfire and vice versa. I'm not a death metal aficionado by any stretch, but they have been described as very old school death metal, keeping pretty much to the hard-hitting basics, and I've found them to be an excellent live band and what I've heard from this album so far is pretty awesome.

Get it here.


EDIT: Yeah, apparently Sapremia is signed to a small label. Whoops.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Dave Thomas!



Primarily known as a Youtube filmmaker, Dave Thomas has recorded a few songs in his time as well. Most of the songs are Keiko Matsui-esque easy-listening electronic jazz, composed on a Garage Band-ish computer program. There is one that's more hippity-hop flavored, the only song to have vocals, "Pull My Pants Up (This Is How)", a track that's equal parts Tim & Eric and Radio-era LL Cool J.

The album title is a bit of a misnomer; DT has recorded at least one other song, "Things That Make Me Sexy", that wasn't made available at the time this compilation was put together. But it will be available soon, and I'll let you know when that goes down.

As I said, Dave Thomas is primarily a Youtube filmmaker, having achieved a modest-but-rabid cult following with his Ask a Superhero and DaveLog series, as well as his movie remixes and his Lego Batman movies.

Get the music here.
Go to his official site here.
Watch his videos here.

Saturday, September 5, 2009

The Sky Drops - Clouds of People


Dead Meadow is coming to Mojo 13, a venue in Wilmington that's about a 20-30 minute drive from here. I was going to go see them, but apparently, like most of Mojo's shows, it'll be 21+. I hate Mojo so much. According to my brother, they do so much more business with their all ages shows than their 21+ shows, yet the owner can't be bothered to hire bouncers to keep kids away from the bar, or apparently be bothered to train his bartender to check IDs.

Anyway. The Sky Drops are playing that show, and that's how I came across this EP.

This group sounds exactly like a stripped-down My Bloody Valentine. In fact, if you didn't know ahead of time that this is a different group, you might not be able to tell the difference. On the one hand, that's not so cool, because nobody likes a rip-off (or sometimes they do, but that's a different story), but on the other hand, it's still pretty cool, because it's like brand new MBV material, for which I have a mighty need.

I've just read that Rob Montejo, the male half of The Sky Drops, was in a band called Smashing Orange. I've never heard them, but apparently they were one of the original American shoegaze groups, along with Ride, Lush, and Swervedriver. So it's not like these guys are total newgazers; Montejo at least has been at it awhile.

Get it here.