It’s Managing Editor Andrew Bonazelli’s birthday tomorrow. As we pointed out last year, Bonzo loves audio alchemy. Now he’s a year older, and he still loves mashups, though we’re not sure he’ll be able to handle this one: Daft Punk vs. Slayer vs. Pussycat Dolls vs. Limp Bizkit. It’s mixed by Austrian DJ Schmolli, who also has a pretty fun Ozzy-Bangles mix available for download here and a totally bitchin’ mega-mix that includes Paradise Lost v. Pink and Carcass v. Madonna here.
DJ Schmolli, “Don’t Cha Take A Robot Around South of Heaven”
We here at Decibel were going to plan an elaborate Deciblog Holiday post. Something in the order of Bergdorf Goodman. But the elves were redistributed from our Holiday Department to Graphics. The layouts for Decibel issues #52 and #53 must be on deadline. And we’re always professionally behind.
From Decibel to you: Merry Shitmas, fuckers!
Audio excerpt courtesy of defunct Swedish thrashers Gehennah. Song title “Merry Shitmas.”
Only 14 shopping days ’til Christmas! If you don’t spend like a mofo, the Detroit auto industry will shrivel up and die, the terrorists will win (again) and Eli Stone won’t get renewed for another season. To get you properly in the holiday spirit, here’s the A side from Fucked Up’s “David Christmas” 7″ from 2007. It was available online before, then it wasn’t, now it is again. Best listened to while sipping egg nog and smashing shit with a sledgehammer.
As radio stations flood airwaves with the holiday cheer (mostly jeer) of Burl Ives, Gene Autry, Bing Crosby, Andy Williams, Thurl Ravenscroft, Wham, The Ronettes, and 8 million others, Austrian Death Machine, brainchild of As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis, issued its cover of James Lord Pierpont’s “Jingle Bells.”
DragonForce’s new album Ultra Beatdown came out yesterday. Of course, all you Guitar Zero axeslingers and ADHD guitar nerds know this and probably beat Best Buy’s Geek Squad to work at 6 a.m. to nab a copy. You’ll never be as good as George Lynch, but that’s entirely another Deciblog rant. You also won’t nab a chick like this.
Now that you’re prancing around mom’s livingroom in these with that fake Gibson X-plorer wishing, in your heartest of hearts, that you could be like Herman Li or Sam Totman, let’s rewind a bit. It’s OK. You can pause “Heroes of Our Times.” You’ve only heard it 18.75 times today.
DragonForce may be sweet, awesome, tits, or some leet speak horror of a synonym you found on the Interweb, but they’re no fucking match for Lost Horizon. Who? Yeah, we know you said, ‘Who?’ when fellow Deciblogger Greg M. beautifully detailed Cirith Ungol’s ’84 opus King of the Dead. It’s OK. We all have to start somewhere. Like DragonForce.
Hey now, kids. Let’s refocus. Your head can explode to “Heartbreak Armageddon” after you’ve heard Lost Horizon. We’re pretty serious when we say 2001’s Awakening the World is one of the best power metal albums of the decade. So much so we’re serving up two of the album’s best tracks. Before you LULZ or some other shit, listen. Then listen again. Good isn’t it? Now, go buy it and tell your friends. Rather tell your friends to come here first and then buy it. You’ll never look at hot pink arpeggios the same again.
According to Brian “Lustmord” Williams, Psychological Warfare Technology Systems was originally envisioned as the first part of a Terror Against Terror trilogy that would’ve culminated in a record of blistering white noise. Williams made the record with frequent collaborator Andrew Lagowski in 1989, but it didn’t actually come out until three years later — by which time, both of these guys had filed it away as a “missed opportunity.” The concept behind Psychological Warfare Technology Systems was 100% genius, though: chopped up and screwed film dialogue, samples of semi-automatic weapons/ explosions/ air raid sirens/ helicopters and hard techno beats. Williams and Lagowski purportedly put the record together as a giant piss-take on Front-242 — an attempt to make genuinely menacing, yet danceable, club-ready anthems.
Upon its release, both Williams and Lagowski groused that an extended stay in record label purgatory had already dilluted the record’s ideas and dated the production techniques. The pure ambient stuff (”Biohazard”) sounds like filler and electronic music has gone through about a million different iterations, but the mid-tempo stuff is totally forward-thinking and quite unlike anything else that was coming out at the time. How dilluted can the ideas be, anyway? This record came out at the tail end of the Cold War but seemed to forecast global terrorism and increased militarization. Here we are in 2008, the world’s in much worse shape, and Psychological Warfare Technology Systems (which has now been out of print for over a decade) is definitely due for a reissue.
Scott Harding — aka Scotty Hard — is in bad shape. Last month, the veteran hip-hop producer was involved in a car accident that left him partially paralyzed. Harding’s friends and admirers have set up a fund called The Scotty Hard Trust to help offset his massive medical expenses and are accepting donations via Paypal. Harding has a ton of credits to his name (Black Sheep, Wu Tang, De La Soul) and was more or less the house producer at Island’s subsidiary Gee Street throughout the early 90’s, but his work with bugged-out Brookyln duo New Kingdom was clearly his finest hour. Do you dig Dälek? New Kingdom was doing Dälek years before Dälek dropped Negro Necro Nekros and producer Alap “Oktopus” Momin has expressed his admiration for Harding’s production technique in countless interviews. I always hoped Harding would get his chance to work on a traditional rock or metal record, and wondered why he hadn’t, given his love of heaviness and distortion. I saw New Kingdom (with Harding on guitar) in Cleveland back in the summer of ‘96 and my eardrums still haven’t recovered. Get well, dude.
