PUKEHAMMER

Looking back on it, it's pretty goddamn amazing the risks record labels were willing to take in the nineties, and few if any labels took more risks than Release Entertainment, the experimental/noise sub-label of Relapse Records.  The label's tagline was "Release Your Mind" and from the ear-bleeding noise assaults of Merzbow and Masonna to the deeply disturbed death industrial of Brighter Death Now and Atrax Morgue, it was pretty obvious that this wasn't just a clever catchphrase.  To endure the ultra-harsh sounds Release was doling out required an open mind and then some. Indeed, Release Entertainment put out some of the most mind-bending/destroying albums of the nineties, but the most bat-shit insane thing they ever pressed onto disc might just be Haters' Drunk on Decay . Released upon a largely unsuspecting CD-buying public back in 1997, the hype sticker for this one pretty much says it all in terms of what you're getting. "All sounds on this CD wer...

There are many harsh noise releases out there that you can put on if you want to attempt to fry your ears and melt your brain; hell, if you spend an evening trawling Bandcamp you'll find that they're practically a dime a dozen.  The Rita's Magazine operates on very different and dare I say much higher level; this is an album you can listen to on good earbuds in a pitch-black room while smoking a fatty (or whatever your choice of mind-altering substance may be) and go floating around the fucking cosmos on a sea of distortion. Magazine is a whopping eighty-plus minutes of pure noise from The Rita, originally released on double cassette back in 2005 and now being reissued, remastered and expanded on 2xCD and digital by venerable New York-based noise/electronic/experimental label New Forces.  This 2005 recording indeed captures The Rita at his most mesmerizing, erecting gigantic walls of burly, churning anti-music that seem to reach out of the speakers, grab a hold of your go...

Remember back in the nineties when just about every well known artist had a vanity label? There was Nothing Records (Trent Reznor), Maverick Records (Madonna), Grand Royal (Beastie Boys), UZI Suicide (Guns 'n' Roses), Elementree Records (Korn), the list goes on and on.  What a lot of folks don't seem to know though is that Rob Zombie had a short-lived vanity label called Zombie-A-Go-Go Records and he actually put out some pretty cool shit on it back in the day. One one of those cool shit releases was Halloween Hootenanny , a compilation of spooky surf, psychobilly and garage rock bands that's been a staple of my All-hallows listening for the past two-and-a-half decades.  The album's silly title and eye-catching cover art, featuring the rocking trio of the Mummy, the Wolfman and Frankenstein's Monster, screams ultimate Halloween party record and that's indeed the vibe that carries throughout Halloween Hootenanny 's nineteen terrifying tracks. Released in ...

Now that it's October and the Halloween season is finally upon us, I've been thinking about spooky shit to listen to that falls outside of the norm.  I mean, I love the Misfits as much as anybody, but sometimes you just gotta give "Ghouls Night Out" a rest, ya know?  As my feeble brain began to swirl with thoughts of truly terrifying tunes, the one album that kept popping into my head was Megaptera's The Curse of the Scarecrow . Formed in the early nineties, Megaptera were a Swedish death industrial trio that went on to become one of the genre's defining bands, alongside the likes of Brighter Death Now, MZ.412 and Atrax Morgue.  They released The Curse of the Scarecrow in 1998 via Release Entertainment, the sadly defunct experimental/noise sub-label of Relapse Records.  The album is an exercise in creepy, ominous atmosphere that continues to fill listeners with unending dread nearly two-and-a-half decades later. The core sound of The Curse of the Scarecrow c...