About

For the past thirteen years, I wrote a metal blog.  Now I write about noise and other non-metal forms of music in an effort challenge myself.

I also have a YouTube channel where I talk about brutal death metal, goregrind and slam (and occasionally other types of metal).

The title of this blog comes from my wife, who referred to a ride at the Oregon State Fair as "the puke hammer."

Popular posts from this blog

MY NOISE ORIGIN STORY

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A few months ago, I was put on the spot to explain my love of noise to some friends who were unfamiliar with the wonders of Merzbow. Unfortunately, I was quite stoned at the time and as a result failed miserably. But in the days and weeks that followed, it got me thinking about my path to discovering noise and why I enjoy it. I wasn’t able to properly articulate my fascination with ear destroying sounds while under the influence, but I’ll do my best here and now. I’ve always loved music and I think my interest in noise began as a byproduct of that when I was a teenager in the early/mid nineties. Like many young metalheads I was an aspiring guitarist, but there were many days where I spent as much time hooking up a bunch of effects pedals and seeing what kinds of fucked up racket I could coax out of my Squire Stratocaster as I did learning Metallica riffs (likely much to my mother’s dismay). The less it sounded like a guitar and the more hideous the sounds coming out of my amplifier got...
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TIME IS RUNNING OUT. NOISE IS MUSIC.

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  After many years of listening to (enduring? surviving?) Merzbow, I've come to realize that for the most part I tend to enjoy his collaborations and splits more than I enjoy his solo material.  I have to be in a very specific mood to handle the Japanese God of Noise's all-out aural overkill, but when there is another artist present to balance him out, it tends to make things a bit more palatable. Such is the case with Retribution By All Other Creatures , the latest release from Merzbow and long-running California noise-agitators Bastard Noise.  The album is billed as a collaboration, but the promo I received didn't include any credits, so I'm not sure if the artists actually guested on each others' material, or if this is just a more traditional split release.  Whatever the case, it's easily one of the most unsettling things I've had the (dis)pleasure of listening to in 2022. Bastard Noise kick things off with "Animals Running Human Factory Farms"...
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THE CREATURE STOLE MY SURFBOARD

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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 ...
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