TOAD, THE GARDNERZ, AND FESTIVAL OF THE FUCK BANDS

I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve been pretty light on content the last two days (not meaning to take anything away from Andy’s haiku reviews, but what’s lighter than haiku?). I had to be out of town for 2 days for my fucking day job, one of those deals where I was going from early ’til really late, with almost no time to check out what’s been happening in the world of metal or listen to music or write much. As a result, I find myself way behind, so far behind that trying to catch up seems unrealistic. Basically, I’m just a big behind.

But I’m not completely empty-handed this morning.  I did spot a few items on a quick survey of my e-mail and Facebook that I thought were worth sharing. Here they are. Things should be getting back to ab-normal around here today or tomorrow.

TOAD

TOAD are from Phoenix, Arizona. They aren’t actually named after toads. The name is an acronym for Take Over and Destroy. But I like the fact that they just go fuckin’ ugly with TOAD.

I got interested in the band about 10 days ago when I spotted the killer artwork you see above (by Sean Williams), which appears on their forthcoming EP Endless Night (click it to make it bigger). I waited for the release of some music, and yesterday I got some. I actually got an advance of the EP, which I haven’t heard yet (fucking day job), but the reason I’m including TOAD in this post is that Pitchfork premiered a song from the EP for everyone to hear.

The song is “Howling House”, and I’m so glad it turns out to be excellent music, what with the very promising signs provided by the EP art and the TOAD name: it’s doomy, sludgy, stomping, blasting, caustic, melodic, and discordant. A very interesting genre-bender and a good teaser for the rest of the EP.

Go HERE to listen to “Howling House”. Endless Night is due on June 25 via Comfort Point Records. It can be ordered on vinyl here. The band’s previous EP, Rotten Tide, is a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp, and the new EP will also be available at that Bandcamp page on the day of release.

https://www.facebook.com/TakeOverAndDestroy

 

THE GARDNERZ

I’ve written about this Swedish band before, and I’m writing about them again because they’ve just released a new single. It’s a free digital download now, and in the future it will be released on vinyl by Abyss Records, with cover art (shown above) by All Things Rotten.

The single consists of two tracks, which are really two parts of a single song — “Exiting Reality – Part 1” and “Exiting Reality – Part 2”. The music is difficult to classify, part death and part doom, part hard-rocking riffs and part brain-scrambling arpeggios, part harsh vox that sound like a bear gargling glass shards or strangled shrieking and part occult clean vocals, with frequent tempo changes, quirky soloing, and even an acoustic interlude.

The Gardnerz definitely march (and stagger) to the beat of their own drummer. Very interesting stuff. The single can be downloaded at Bandcamp (here). The band have also released two lyric videos, one for each of the two tracks. Check those out below.

https://www.facebook.com/thegardnerz

 

FESTIVAL OF THE FUCK BANDS

Since I’m so far behind, I might as well write about something that’s more than four years old. A friend and co-worker who knows of my fondness for the word “fuck” and all its derivatives sent me a link yesterday to a story about the Festival of the Fuck Bands. According to the story, the festival began in 2000, but I haven’t seen any indication that it continued past 2008. Too fucking bad.

The festival consisted of performances by bands who had the word “fuck” in their names. In 2008, the North American contingent at the festival consisted of Fucked Up and Holy Fuck from Toronto, Portland’s Starfucker, and Oakland’s Fuck. The articles also mentioned a British electronic duo named Fuck Buttons (who won the award for “Fresh New Fuck Band”) and some Dutch rockers known as Fuck The Writer. The festival also included seminars on the value of the word “fuck”. Fuck yeah.

Of course, there was only one place in the world where this festival could be held: Fucking, Austria. I wrote a post about that town back in November 2010 if you’d like to learn more (it also included some verbiage about Wank, Germany). And by the way, rumors which circulated in 2012 that the residents of Fucking had voted to change the town’s name are false. Thank fuck for that.

I’m saddened by the fact that the festival seems to have died out since 2008. It was a good fucking run while it lasted.

Here’s “Lights Go Up” from Fucked Up, performed live “in the round” in 2011. If you stay with this, you’ll see an unusual way to end a show.