The Heavy Duty

The Duty's Live Evil - Fu Manchu!

2012-02-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

Fu Manchu // Helms Alee // Witchburn
El Corazon, Seattle
January 14, 2012

"She wanted nothing, and I delivered..."

And with that, the opening line from Fu Manchu's "Ojo Rojo," Scott Hill cemented himself as a Lyrical Genius of Rock and Roll. Goddamn. She wanted nothing. And I delivered. It's such a great line, and I don't think you could write anything more perfect, or more Fu Manchu, if you tried. When Scott's Jeff Spicoli-timbre recites those lines, seriously, it's dusk on the beach and there's a parked Chevelle and a cooler of Modelo Especials ten feet to your left.

I've long thought that Scott's lyrics are Fu Manchu's secret weapon. We've long joked here on The Duty about Fu Manchu being "San Clemente's Loudest Band," and we've long stuffed our posts with references to their fuzzy riffs and tempos that make you drive fast, and while all that's certainly true when I think about what makes Fu Manchu "Fu Manchu" I keep coming back to the words, man, the words. There's any number of bands with pentatonic solos and power chords, and there's just as many songs about muscle cars and space aliens, but with the Fu it's just different. As much as I know that their decades-long catalogue of songs is steeped in drag races, dirtbikes, and pinball, there's a lot of times when I can't even tell which songs are about what or if they were even about dirtbikes in the first place. Sometimes the tells are easy ("Boogie Van" is about customized van rallies, duh), but I listened to "Blue Tile Fever" for years and years and years before I had any idea that it was about skating in empty pools...and I had to read that on a message board. It kinda blew my mind actually, it'd be so easy to tackle the subject by name-dropping the Dogtown guys or to actually use a word like, um, "pool," but to describe the experience as a "Blue...Tile...Feve-ah" seemed inspired and strangely poetic.

But most of all, it doesn't seem stupid. Or kitschy. Or ironic. It wasn't dumb. And in fact, nothing from Fu Manchu is dumb. Even when they write a song about Bigfoot ("Grendel, Snowman") they open with a line like "Cast a shadow miles across the sun." Whoa, such an amazing take on immensity, one that I don't think is even possible. A shadow across the sun? Can you even do that? Fuck, who cares!? There's a confidence to how Scott writes and the way he approaches motorbikes, In Search Of..., and Three's Company as being cool for no other reason than the fact that they're motorbikes, In Search Of..., and Three's Company. Scott Hill's genius is that he never tells you why he likes airbrushed muscle cars or sunglasses, and he never ever tries to tell you a story about a guy who built the baddest chopper or who scored the foxiest babes. If he lionized anything like that it would wind up having the opposite effect; by explicitly championing Evel Knievel or the power of hardcore he'd only be robbing those things of the power and gravity that made them great in the first place.

**********

Here's some band covering "Blue Tile Fever." They might like Fu Manchu more than I do, a thought which I find terrifying.

Setlist: Hell on Wheels / Bionic Astronautics / Mongoose / Evil Eye / IN SEARCH OF...: Regal Begal / Missing Link / Asphalt Risin' / Neptune's Convoy / Redline / Cyclone Launch / Strato-Streak / Solid Hex / The Falcon Has Landed / Seahag / The Bargain / Supershooter / ENCORE: Weird Beard / King of the Road / Godzilla

(Image above is from the January 2006 at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, CA. If you look closely you can see me. When the band finished their set, Fu guitarist Bob Balch ran offstage and bee-lined it to the men's room.)

Van Halen II: No Harmonies, No Problem

2012-02-09T21:57:00.000-08:00

February Wants Some!! is The Heavy Duty's month-long celebration of the mighty Van Halen. We'll be writing a post loosely based on each VH album in sequential order. Enjoy!

By Devon Booth

You wanna know my favorite part about Van Halen II? This. This video of the band playing "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" from 1998. Hot damn.

It's the first YouTube video I ever saw. The second it ended the first thing I did was email it to Matt so it could be the first YouTube video that he ever saw. The first thing he did after it ended was to email it to his dad so it could be the first YouTube video that Pops ever saw. It's honestly one of the hands-down greatest things I've ever seen, and easily part of the Mount Rushmore of all things Van Halen, right there alongside "Eruption" and that poster of David Lee Roth in ass-less chaps. I like this video for all the obvious reasons (Michael Anthony, always incredible with the stage moves and boozy bass, this time incrediblin' it up while handlin' the lead mike-ro-phone; Alex Van Halen in a neck brace; Eddie halfway-fumbling his oh so sweet leads), but what makes me love it most of all is that from the moment I heard of its very existence I immediately thought, "Man, isn't Van Halen just the coolest?" No band has been more appealing arrogant than these guys. Not then, not now, and not ever. In 1998 they were in dire straits: long past Dave, no more Sammy, and now saddled with a singer no one liked and a record no one cared about. So what did they do? They pulled the baddest tune out of their catalog and then told the baddest dude in the band that he was gonna sing the darn thing.

A stroke of motherfucking genius.

When you watch this clip I guarantee you'll see nothing but timeless Van Halen personality dripping offstage and into the front row; it's kinda drunk and it's a little sloppy, which of course means that it's PURE VAN HALEN. It's a jealousy-inducing spectacle of the Greatest Time Ever that You Wish You Were Having Right Now But That You Sorta Feel Like You Are Having Even Though You're Sitting At Home Because You're Watching This and It's Stone-Cold Infectious. "Somebody Get Me a Doctor" makes me fall in love with both my life and with Van Halen every time I watch it, and even every time I dare to think of it. From the moment it starts up it never fails to fill me full of a life and energy that I can't help but email the link to everyone I know all over again and hope that it's their first time on YouTube too.

Van Halen I: The Storm Before The Calm

2012-02-08T11:09:00.000-08:00

February Wants Some!! is The Heavy Duty's month-long celebration of the mighty Van Halen. We'll be writing a post loosely based on each VH album in sequential order. Enjoy!

By Greg Timmons

February, 1978. I had to go back and look at the music that was happening at that time… thank you Interwebs. As cool as it might be to say that my mind has been clouded from years of drugs and booze (very Rock and Roll), the truth is… that was just a long time ago. I’m two years out of high school, playing guitar in a country band, and half of the dynamic duo that is The Heavy Duty was nothing more than a gleam in my eye.

Ted Nugent (Cat Scratch Fever ’77), Robin Trower (Bridge of Sighs ’74), Thin Lizzy – Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson (Jailbreak ’76)… these were some of the players and bands that ruled rock guitar. Big and bluesy, they sold records and filled stadiums. Sure, we had other guitar heroes… Al Di Meola (Elegant Gypsy ’77), Yes – Steve Howe (Going for the One ’77), Rush – Alex Lifeson (2112 ’76) but they were playing brainy, progressive rock… toomuch technique and not enough girls. Not really what I wanted to hear. I admired the skills, but not the grooves.

February of 1978. Sometime after the 10th (or maybe on the 10th, the day the album was released), I’m driving down a two lane road, somewhere in Santa Maria, CA. The radio is on, but I’m not really paying attention. I hear the DJ mention a new release from a new band, and he cues up “Eruption”. Big drum fill, the first chord, a flurry of notes… WTF? Three more chords, and all hell breaks loose. I’m desperately looking for a place to pull over, trying not to kill anyone in the process. Grabbing for the radio’s volume control, I crank it up in just enough time to hear the last echoes of Eddie’s first whammy dive bomb. GOD DAMMIT! FUCKING MISSED THE BEST PART! But then, out of nowhere, he starts again. (I am convinced to this day that Ed had to be laughing his ass off in the studio… just a wee pause… knowing we would all exhale just before he kicks us in the nuts).

But he doesn’t just start again. Now he brings the SHIT. Fully realized, ready to go, Not-only-can-I-not-play-that, I- don’t-even-know-what- it-is SHIT. Nobody had that tone. Nobody had that speed. Nobody had those notes. Pure.Guitar.Sex. And when he starts to tap (not that I knew what the hell that was), it was GAME OVER. Sell the amps, burn the guitars. Nugent, Travers, Scholz… thanks fellas. It’s been fun, hope you saved some cash. Good God… and “You Really Got Me” hadn’t even started yet!

Needless to say, within the next few days, I had the record. Start to finish, cut for cut… this was the
NEW way. Pure Rock Music, exploding from my speakers. I knew I couldn’t play like that, and I didn’t care. I just knew that when I listened to Van Halen, I was proud to be a guitar player. I had work to do, and I had the road map in my hand.

We only get a few albums like this in our lifetime… Are you Experienced, The Unforgettable Fire, Nevermind… music that is so unique, so undeniable, so pure, that we have to step back and accept the fact that we just started over. 34 years later, every time I hear Van Halen I, I’m still starting over. And I like it.

Van Halen - "I'm the One" (Live in Manchester)

Greg Timmons is a musician who brings the sizzle and the steak all around the Puget Sound. He also happens to be the father of Heavy Duty co-founder Matthew Timmons. Check out his band Timmons-Wall at the Highway 99 Blues Club on February 29th. For more dates go here.

I Can Handle The Truth

2012-02-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

I sat down at my computer tonight with the intention of writing an old-school Heavy Duty Track by Track Duty Attack about A Different Kind of Truth. Whole lee shit. About halfway through I ran out of ways to write 'fuuuuuuck yessssss," so I spiked it. Snap takes are so easy in this Twitter/Facebook world, I want to give you something a bit more substantial. Or I want to sit on it as long as possible. Either way, look for a "One Month In" style review later on so I can dig in a bit more.

Okay fine here's my quick first take on ADKOT: As much as this is about Roth returning to the fold, this is truly the EVH show. Roth's presence gives Ed an excuse to exhume all the old riffs and go as heavy and as fast as possible. This is some serious guitar wizardry. No Van Hagar over-chorused plodding bullshit. Just go listen to it yourself! You won't be disappointed.

And tomorrow we'll kick off our month-long celebration "February Wants Some!!" with an ultra-secret special guest who's contribution is at the core of all things Duty. You might even say the's the god "father" of this site. Or maybe he's the top of the "Pops" of Van Halen know-how. Who is this mystery man? Check in tomorrow to find out!

This Month In Amazon $5 Downloads: February

2012-02-01T21:01:00.000-08:00

Rio - Duran Duran - Remember the video for "Come Undone" where these Brits were hanging around a fish-tank. Sexiest fish-tank use of all time?

Van Halen I - Van Halen - In advance of "February Wants Some," you probably should pick this one up if you haven't yet. It's pretty good.

Mezzanine - Massive Attack - Who knew The Drive Soundtrack would be the Rosa Parks of electronica music for The Duty?

Live In Santa Monica '72 - David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust comes and knocks at your door.

Dreamboat Annie - Heart - This has some serious deep album cuts potential.

Blind Melon - Blind Melon - Or what? You'll release the dogs or the bees? Or the dogs with bees in their mouths and when they bark they shoot bees at you?

New Album - Boris - Buy this before they put out another album and this title makes no sense.

Eponymous - R.E.M. - See, "eponymous" means your hair. So technically it's true. That's what makes it so funny.

American Pie - Don McLean - Does Don at least get invited to the red carpet premieres for them American Pie flicks? You got any gum?

The Month in Bedroom Covers

2012-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

(Bedroom Covers is a Tumblr page where I collect videos of people playing cover songs on their webcams. Once a month I'll post a few of my favorites here on The Heavy Duty.)

Led Zeppelin - "The Ocean"
YouTube user ewallen
Love the product placement. I like to see young guys so forward-thinking.

INXS - "Never Tear Us Apart"
YouTube user MoonwalkerPJ
The cover's great on its own, but how can you not smile at MoonwalkerPJ's Wolfman Jack/Don Cornelius-styled introduction? So spectacular. Dude's like a real performer, he is, and with that killer jungle cat shirt...? You can't beat it.

Van Halen - "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love"
YouTube user aschmidtibc
I was so excited about the band's upcoming release that I decided to post a ton of Van Halen vids this month, and this kid's take on "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" was by far my favorite. He has that perfect amount of pretension and I really like it when he sings the guitar part at 2:28.

The Mars Volta - "The Widow"
YouTube user MipKouta
Hmmm, I'm really stretching the definition of "bedroom" with this one, but considering that fella's t-shirt his bedroom may actually be that corrugated storage garage.

Pearl Jam - "Black"
YouTube user Newrockstation
I tend to forget about Pearl Jam, a shame since I'm sure they're an untapped resource of quality Bedroom Covers.

(Follow Bedroom Covers on Tumblr and Twitter. Links are provided under each video for easy re-posting and re-Tumblring!)

You Wanted a Post, You Gotta Post

2012-01-26T12:04:00.000-08:00

Has it really been a week since we've posted? What's with us, man? Well, sorry about the delay in fabulous content, but we promise we've got some neat stuff coming up soon that will kill at least five minutes of your workday. With two big shows in Seattle this week, The Aristocrats and Alabama Shakes, we should have reviews of both up next week.

And since it's coming up fast, it's time to announced that The Heavy Duty has dubbed next month "February Wants Some!!" All month we'll be celebrating the new Van Halen album release with a shitload of posts about the band. So much content, with the explicit goal of making you so sick you'll involuntarily hurl after hearing a single yelp from DLR. But for now, how about a quick preview of a new song that sounds like a half-assed version of "Dance the Night Away" without the killer tone? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Van Halen - "Blood and Fire" (Preview)

And You Snow It

2012-01-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

As I'm sure you've read by now, The Heavy Duty's home base of Seattle has been blanketed with a magnificent work closing, hot chocolate hoarding, frosty face causing snowstorm that's grinding the city to a halt. And I thought we should celebrated this glorious day with all the songs with "snow" in the title that came up in my iTunes search!

GWAR - "Pure as the Arctic Snow"

Fu Manchu - "Grendel, Snowman"

Black Sabbath - "Snowblind"

AC/DC - "Snowballed"

The Year in Bedroom Covers

2012-01-16T17:45:00.000-08:00

It was one year ago today that I started a Tumblr page called Bedroom Covers. It was an easy bit: YouTube videos of people playing cover songs in their bedrooms. "Song I know. People I don't." Since last January I've done my best to upload two videos to the site every single morning. To date there's over 720 posts, everything from cover versions of Mayhem, The James Gang, and Des'ree to performances by middle-aged men in sunglasses, teenage girls in heavy makeup, and shirtless bros from foreign shores. There's so much great stuff on here I'll personally guarantee that every one of you will find a video you enjoy so much that you couldn't even conceive of your life without it.

So in honor of Bedroom Covers' first anniversary here's ten of my favorite videos from the past year. Thanks for watching. Two more videos will be uploaded tomorrow at seven.

The Smiths - "There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"
YouTube user cataclismo
Bedroom Covers' first post, and a prescient one at that. No band is more tailor-made for closing your bedroom door and turning on your outdated webcam than The Smiths. Fantastic, touching, and sung with accents. Accents!

Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Tuesday's Gone"
YouTube user froggy1954
I sometimes wonder why this guy put this up, and then why he hasn't taken it down.

UFO - "Rock Bottom"
YouTube user nooneung
Matt and I used to go to this bar in downtown Seattle where we'd drink tallboys of Pabst and the DJ would play stuff like Sepultura and Thin Lizzy. Every now and again we'd hear UFO's "Rock Bottom" and I'd always think, "Goddamn, what a killer tune." Apparently this kid did too. I always love a Bedroom Cover where the guy not only nails the riffs and the ripping solos, but can sing the tune at the same time. nooneung gets extra points 'cause he does all of that and then pipes in those cool MIDI backing samples. In fact, this video is so rad there's no reason it shouldn't have a million more views than it does right now, so please do this guy a huge favor and send this link to Vinnie Moore or Mike McCready or Kirk Hammett or some other guitar dude who's down with Michael Schenker so we can make that happen.

The Go-Betweens - "Rock and Roll Friend"
YouTube user volitapearl
So while I really, really, really like The Go-Betweens, I was never much a fan of this song until I found volitapearl's 4 AM version of "Rock and Roll Friend" and it changed everything. If Bedroom Covers accomplishes one thing I want that one thing to be to talk her into recording a real-deal full-length version of this. This track is exactly the kind of cover I want when I'm plugging in the headphones: it's a little bit lonesome and a whole lot original. I don't think I'd ever notice it was the same song. I love the way volitapearl decided to play the octave power-chords and her voice is outstanding. Check out volitapearl's band's Tumblr page and follow her on Twitter. I think I'll throw her an @, and I might even download her EP off Bandcamp.

Bell Biv Devoe - "Poison"
YouTube user stassman75
Man, I got a TON of hits and re-Tumblrs from this one, and why shouldn't I have? This version not only sounds great, but this guy is serious about having fun with this tune. There's no flubs and, most importantly, no irony. It's perfect. He even recorded it on his iPad. Neat!

Dinosaur Jr - "Drawerings"
YouTube user sarahvideos
Sorry, but I gotta get this misogynist shit out of the way first: this lady's way foxy. I like the glasses and the dark hair and how that spaghetti strap falls off her shoulder the way that it does right there at 0:40. But the real reason this video is great isn't because of any of that, it's because I've listened to "Drawerings" somewhere around a thousand times and I never thought of it as anything other than a J Mascis bit: it wasn't anything but guitar solos and a crackly voice. But when I came across sarahvideos' version (months and months before I'd even thought of starting Bedroom Covers) I remember watching it and thinking, "Wow, this song sounds completely different." And by that I mean it sounded completely new. It was the first time I ever heard "Drawerings" stand on its own merits and not as just another piece of J Mascis lore or mythology. It took me seventeen years and a stranger's cover version before I finally heard this song as a great composition in and of itself. I think that's pretty cool. Thanks, Sarah.

Billy Vera & The Beaters - "At This Moment"
YouTube user andvoice
Family Ties. Such a fantastic show. For my money there was nothing better than the interplay between Michael J. Fox and Tina Yothers. It was truly among the best comedic chemistry TV has ever seen.

Riskay - "Smell Yo Dick"
YouTube user JafeAndTexas
I read about Riskay on VICE and it seemed like there'd be some fun cover versions of "Smell Yo Dick" out there. I've watched a few of 'em, but this is hands-down the best. Damn. Dude's got a good voice and a solid chord hand, and how great is it when that other guy peeks in and says, "Motherfucker"? It makes me clap my hands I like it so much. When I first posted this I would listen to it a couple of times every morning before work and then spend the rest of the day with lines like "dirty-foot bitches" running through my head.

KISS - "Lick It Up"
YouTube user cpkphil
KISS's best song. cpkphil and his pre-programmed Casio makes me want to dance, dance, dance. Wait, who am I kidding here? I'm dancing right now.

Van Halen - "I'm the One"
YouTube user TrevorRules98
I know this'll sound like bullshit, but Bedroom Covers was intended as a celebration. I wanted the site to be a celebration of talent and skill, and of courage and honesty. I wanted it to be fun and inspiring, and even when I post something that I think is terrible or embarrassing I more often than not seek out videos that make me smile and that warm my heart with their sense of pure self-expression. I'm closing the Year in Bedroom Covers with TrevorRules98 first and foremost because "I'm the One" is leaps and bounds my favorite cut from Van Halen I and because I was a full ten years older than this kid when I tried to learn that pull-off riff and I couldn't even come close. But secondly, and more importantly, I'm closing with Trev because this video is just so much fun. No one has done Bedroom Covers more perfectly: there's no pretension and no posturing. I watch this and I know that Trev thinks Van Halen is badass. He thinks the solos in "I'm the One" are badass, and he thinks putting a video of himself playing guitar to the backing tracks on YouTube is super-badass. He probably bragged to all his friends about it for weeks on end. Fuck yeah. It's fucking great. Life is fucking awesome. It's super-badass.

(Follow Bedroom Covers on Tumblr and Twitter. Links are provided under each video for easy re-posting and re-Tumblring!)

Scott Kelly Plays Neil Young. It's Pretty Cool.

2012-01-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

Here's some video of Neurosis' Scott Kelly and Yakuza's Bruce Lamont playing Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer" at Chicago's Empty Bottle earlier this month. Since today's my day off and there's snow on the ground outside my window, this song sounds GREAT. Enjoy.

The Duty's Live Evil: Scott Kelly // Jay Munly // Bob Wayne!

2012-01-15T12:37:00.000-08:00

(Hey everyone, here's a thing I wrote about the Scott Kelly // Jay Munly // Bob Wayne show I saw last November. I wrote it fairly soon after the show, goofed around not finishing it, and then decided I wasn't going to publish the thing after all. After recycling nearly all the bits into my 2011 Year in Re-Brew I went back and re-read this draft and liked it anyway. So here it is. Apologies for the redundancies. Enjoy.)

Scott Kelly // Jay Munly // Bob Wayne
Tractor Tavern, Seattle
November 29, 2011

I'd never heard of Jay Munly until he walked onstage and started playing.

In the week that passed I think I listened to his 2002 record Jimmy Carter Syndrome somewhere around thirty-five times. It's now somewhere around one month later and I've already listened to it three times today. It's even playing right now, right as I type this. Within the first thirty seconds of seeing Munly sit down on a folding chair and plug in his guitar I knew he was great and I knew I was about to be a big, big, BIG fan.

And so far I was right. The guy is great. I am a big fan.

Jay Munly looks like he's six-and-a-half feet tall and weighs just under a hundred pounds. When he strolled onstage the other night he carried with him a neckerchief and a bottle of Budweiser, and he wore so much black that I thought I could see clear through him. He sang his forty minutes of songs with a voice that was half Nick Cave baritone and half wailing Appalachian falsetto, and either way the sound broke my heart. Like I said, I'd never heard any of these songs, but from what I could tell from first listen they were half about Old Testament and prizefighters, and half about dogs and frontier abortions. Every so often Munly would pull back and from the mic and speak a few lyrics to himself, in an aside that we could barely hear. Between songs the guy didn't say a single word. Not one. He just stared straight ahead, past the crowd and back toward the soundboard, and maybe he tuned his guitar. Halfway through his set he fished an alligator clip out of his pocket and clipped it to a string, punctuating the following song with blasts of what sounded like the kick from a distorted TR-808.

When his set was finished he casually stood up and walked off. We clapped Munly back to the stage and he came back out, stared, raised his arms like Touchdown Jesus, and played one more.

I think it was something dark and brooding, and it had a little twang to it.

So I'm all in with Jay Munly. All the way. I'm attracted to intimidating and intense, to loneliness and introspection, and also to deadpan humor, and I think this here Munly is probably pretty goddamn hilarious. He's playing up his shtick for sure. He knows he's the Michael Shannon of Gothic Americana; while he's pouring his heart out and reaching into his darkness, he's smiling inside with a pride and confidence that he's doing it better than anyone else out there.

Here's "Cooney Vs. Munly," my most-played track from the album I mentioned above. As Gordon Marino wrote in his New York Times review of At the Fights, "Where there is risk there is drama, and boxers put more at risk than other athletes. In a single evening, they roll the dice with their health, marketability and sense of identity," or as Mike Tyson said somewhere sometime, "Next to boxing, everything is so boring." I don't know if either of those quotations actually relate to this song, but I think about both of them all the time and they're the first things that came to me when I noticed that lyrics about spit-buckets and dropping weight had just stopped me dead in my tracks.

Setlist:
Beats me, but in hindsight I know it included: Circle Round My Bedside / Cooney Vs. Munly / Goose Walking Over My Grave

(Top Jay Munly image courtesy of DenverThread c.2009. Bottom Jay Munly image courtesy of the Munly & Lupercalians Facebook page.)

Opeth Your Heart To Me

2012-01-13T23:37:00.000-08:00

How did it take me so long to come around to Opeth? I'm supposed to be a professional music writer, ~~Tebowing~~ preaching to all the Duty faithful about that good rock and or roll. And I've failed all of you. Somehow I've taken a big Pete Incaviglia-sized whiff on this band up until now and it's embarrassing me even to admit it. I've been cranking their latest album Heritage on Spotify for the last week and I think it's awesome. Fantastic guitar tones, great arrangements, tasty keyboards, and not too prog-tastic. And I for one enjoy all the clean vocals because that's how I like my metal now. Intelligible.

What a great obscure find, eh? Only one of the most celebrated metal bands of the past 15 years, and one I even saw live already! Pulitzer coming my way. Yeesh. I finally decided Stockholm's Loudest Band was worth my time because I've been obsessing over getting a new PRS guitar and both guitarists have their own signature models. So I got interested in checking out their guitar tone and decided to give Heritage a spin. I'm as confused as you are that I waited this long, even when back in September I wrote about this album getting released and didn't think to check out a measly YouTube clip! What an asshole. Oh well. Let's make up for lost time:

Opeth - Slither

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: That Interview's a Pretty Good Idea Edition

2012-01-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Jazz Passenger" - Bottle Oh man, when I was in eighth grade Bottle was a band of college guys and I was their number one fan. I sent fan mail to their PO Box and everything, and they were all very nice to me. I should Facebook some of those guys and interview them for the Duty.

9. "New Mind" - SWANS I like their bunny rabbit goth stuff more than their pummeling noise stuff.

8. "Song 25" - The Austerity Program I wrote about this band once. They play with a drum machine so when I put their EP on my Top 10 for the Lounge Act podcast I used a line from the sticker that was on the first pressing's of Big Black's Headache EP ("Not as good as Atomizer, so don't get your hopes up, cheese!"). I was happy with myself for being clever, but also for being honest. The Austerity Program's Backsliders isn't nearly as good as Black Madonna.

7. "Valentine" - Adrian Borland This is the first time I've heard this song. It's good!

6. "Now Is Better Than Before" - Jonathan Richman Jonathan played this on some TV show in the early '90s. It's a great clip.

5. "The Blood Runs Red" - Discharge One time Heavy Duty contributor Mike Foley checked out this CD from the Seattle Public Library.

4. "Right Brigade" - Bad Brains I don't think anything on this list has ever been on Matt's iTunes.

3. "We Are Never Talking" - Roky Erickson I almost bought a poster when I saw Roky Erickson in 2008. Show wasn't very good, but that poster was neat. Seemed like a hassle to carry it home.

2. "Lame" - Burn the Priest I should really just delete 85% of my iTunes collection.

1. "High Price on Our Heads" - Circle Jerks My mom bought me this album at the Wherehouse.

Don't Ya Trust Me?

2012-01-06T19:50:00.000-08:00

With all the excitement around the mammoth Van Halen juggernaut returning to conquer BeiberFever and steal your ~~girlfriend~~ mother, much is being made about this being the first Van Halen album with David Lee Roth since 1984. This is technically true, but let's not all go crazy and forget about two excellent songs that the full original lineup recorded for Best of Van Halen Vol. 1 back in 1996 (Also featuring the underrated Van Haggar track Humans Being.) Audio evidence:

"You Can't Get This Stuff No More"

"Me Wise Magic"

I probably only like these two songs because of their super-fan deep band cuts potential, along with the romantic notion that a full album during this time with this lineup would have killed. Is there any chance a song off A Different Kind of Truth can be as awesome as those two? Probably not, and because of one man's absence: Michael Fucking Anthony.

We are a broken record around here about how much we adore him, but Mikey is our guy. It's that simple. So I sincerely hope that the new VH album is as remotely as cool as those two songs. But I'm damn sure they'll be lacking in the high-harmonies dept and the sweet alcoholic beverage-shaped bass dept. But I'll try keep and open mind.

People Who Released Albums in 2011, And Cassie Chatelain's Self-Indulgent Memories Tied To Each

2012-01-01T18:02:00.000-08:00

For The Heavy Duty's "Breast of 2011," Matt and Dev are inviting a few friends to share their thoughts on the year's best music.

By Cassie Chatelain

Just like the title says. People who released albums in 2011, and my self-indulgent memories tied to each:

Coldplay:
In High School, I went to the Oregon coast with my best friends family. On the beach a stylish couple in their early thirties asked me to take their picture. I desperately wanted to somehow portray how cool I also was. I wanted them to walk away going "Wow, that high-schooler is super funny and charming without even trying, don't you think?" I took the picture, and gave them their camera back. They were all "Thanks!" and I said "No Welcome!" because I was nervous, and fucked everything up.

On the drive home, everybody stopped at Safeway to go to the bathroom, I was all "Naw, I'm cool." and waited in the car. Less than an hour later I had to pee worse than ever before. It seriously felt like monsters were tap-dancing on my bladder. I weirdly didn't say anything because I felt stupid for not going at the Safeway like everybody else. So I held it while fantasizing about the nightmare this could become (Will I just pee on the upholstery? Could I secretly go in a Taco Bell cup without them noticing? Form a cup with my hands and hoist the pee out the window in sessions like I'm in a sinking raft?) Eventually, we pulled over and I went on the side of the road. When I got home, my sister told me "You JUST missed Coldplay on Letterman." She knew how much I loved them, and she said it as a jab, to rub it in. What a bitch ya know? So I cried in my room with Monday around the corner. Fuck you, High School.

Blondie:
I guess Blondie's still out there husslin'. Debbie Harry is hot, but be honest - If you didn't know her, and your friend was gunna set-you-up with a girl who's name was Debbie Harry, you'd have some reservations.

Beyonce:
I really hate Beyonce. It's amazing how, even people who you think wouldn't like Beyonce, like Beyonce. Are they doing it ironically? "Who, me? Yeah, I'm a drummer in a heavy metal band, but hats off to that Beyonce." Ugh. gross. The best day of my life was when she fell down a flight of stairs during a song. I watched it repeatedly while eating a breakfast sandwich. And she seems like suuuuuuuuuch a bitch.

Red Hot Chili Peppers:
In High School, my friends and I all went through a massive Red Hot Chili Peppers phase. We called them "RHCP." We went to their concert at the Gorge when I was 16. Some guy who was like 30 was all "get on my shoulders" so I could see better. And I was all "No thanks, buddy." What a weirdo.

The Cars:
Don't you want The Cars to be the ones who sing "...Here in my car. I feel safest of all. I can lock all my doors. It's the only way to live in cars." It's actually Gary Newman who sings that. Why? Because it's an imperfect world. A world where you're late to work because the bus picks up a morbidly obese woman at every other bus stop, each taking 6 min to get on the bus with a walker. LADY, YOU DON'T NEED A WALKER. YOU NEED TO LOOSE WEIGHT. DON'T PUNISH US BECAUSE YOU CANT SAY NO TO OLIVE GARDEN ALFREDO BOATS. YOU'RE A DISGRACE. WOULD YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF?! GET SOME FUCKING DIGNITY. WHY ARE YOU WEARING PINK SWEAT PANTS?!"

Cake:
One time we drove across the state, with me in the back seat. Everybody was having conversation, but I couldn't hear a goddamn thing because CAKE was blaring from the back speakers. I like those guys, but damn. It ruined everything until we pulled over to ask some guy to buy us beer and I was like "I can't hear shit back there, you guys." Later, we got some hamburgers and peed in the parking lot of a casino.

Lady Gaga:
Big whoop, she plays the piano and writes her own songs, it's not like she's Ray Charles or anything. This falls under the category of: Supremely boring people find somewhat interesting people very interesting. The whole thing is so contrived, and old-hat. It's like, when your Aunt is blown away because the waitress has pink hair. It's not remotely neat. I feel so alone in my indifference toward this person. That being said, I did enjoy her interview with Larry King, where she wore Luke Perry sunglasses and Larry King suspenders.

Feist:
I really like Feist. But a few years ago I got really drunk with a girlfriend who was in from out of town and I started crying over the lyrics "I gotta man who'll stick it out. Make a home from a rented house." What a drunk bitch.

Cassie Chatelain is a writer/comedienne living in Seattle. She is also the curator of the blog A Lot of Girls Stand Like This. You can follow her on Twitter @dollyhumbert.

Don't Let it Be Over: Matthew's Best of 2011

2011-12-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

We love lists here at The Heavy Duty, and none more than a top ten album list. We also like italicized headers than no one reads. Shit balls cock.

By Matthew Timmons

We've already published two pieces disagreeing with me about as much as you possibly can without wanting to slap me in public, but 2011 was my favorite year for new music in a long, long time. But that claim in itself tells you everything you need to know about enjoying music. Besides sense of humor, nothing is as personal as one's taste in music. I got into these 10 albums in my own personal way, and I could tell you how great they are and you might hate them anyway. Don't worry, we'll still be friends. You'll tell me I'm full of shit and I'll get over it. Too busy dancing to these hot tracks in my kitchen as I sing into a wooden spoon. Hit up these records on Spotify/YouTube/Amazon or whatever and see if they make you swing too.

HONORABLE MENTION: Beyond Magnetic EP, Alabama Shakes EP, David Grissom's Way Down Deep. All these albums are EP's and by my arbitrary rules don't count. Also Watch the Throne was pretty great, but I didn't buy it so it doesn't make the list.

10. The Aristocrats - The Aristocrats

Major instrument gymnastics from three monster players. I've never been much into instrumental wankery, but since I've been player much more guitar this year, I've been searching beyond standard blooze licks for inspiration. And I've found it in Guthrie Govan. But this isn't some solo masturbatory biggest-guitar-dickest-fest, all three players shine in tandem and I much prever this approach over the windblown hair guitar-god Satch/Vai stuff. I did a lot of writing for my science class this quarter, and I needed some good instrumental music to blast while I copied and pasted from Wikipieda. Thanks guys!

9. Smoke Ring for My Halo - Kurt Vile

If Kurt Vile was playing his beat-up Martin outside Pike's Market, mumbling about ghosts or small Pennsylvania towns I doubt I'd stop to listen. But that's the magic of a little touch of reverb, some finger style guitar overdubs, and a great name. Turns a nice kid with nice melodies into an Pitchfork-beloved international superstar.

8. Father, Son, Holy Ghost - Girls

As much as I've listened to this record, I'm shocked I haven't bought a cheap Jazzmaster yet. I wrote a post about this one already, and I have nothing new to say. Check it out!

7. Drive: Official Motion Picture Soundtrack - Cliff Martinez and Various Artists

What a fantastic film Drive turned out to be, and the throbbing electronica night sweats I get from listening to this soundtrack keep the vibe going four months after I stepped out of the theater. Out of all the movies* being talked about for Oscar consideration, I'm fairly certain Drive will be the only one I care about ten years from now. The only other soundtrack I've bought besides this one was for Last Action Hero. I have an outstanding "track" record for soundtrack purchases.

*Honey, they've sent a horse to war!

6. Strange Mercy - St. Vincent

Wrote about this on the Duty a few months back, still really like this album. Bummed I didn't go see her when she played Seattle in October, but I'd just started listening so it wasn't a priority. I guess I'll just watch these live clips over and over.

5. The Hunter - Mastodon

Crack The Skye was a slam-dunk #1 for me two years ago, and Blood Mountain tied for the top spot in 2006. Ranking The Hunter this low has more to do with my overall musical tastes than the quality of the work by Atlanta's loudest band. I'm in a different place, the metal doesn't move the needle for me as it once did. But that says more to Mastodon's genre busting power that they're the only true metal band of my list.

4. Undun - The Roots

Made my top ten on the strength of "The OtherSide" chorus alone. Now that's how you tie together a concept record. A stone cold hip-hop classic right smack in the middle. Even Abed agrees! Also love the epic four movement orchestral outro that has more false endings than Return of the King.

3. Another Night Down the Drain - Cheeseburger

This band is so perfect it pisses me off. All I can think about every time I listen is how stunned it's not super popular with rocking dudes. People are stilling buying up all the old AC/DC, Zeppelin, and Metallica records. Guns and Roses karaoke can sell out arenas. A mummified Van Halen can tour without new material and fans shit themselves. People are so quick to bemoan the death of "rock and roll" music but here it is! Sweaty and coked up and ready to puke on your shoes. Tell your friends!

2. El Camino - The Black Keys

An easy way to gauge an album's awesomeness is how much it makes me want to shake my ass and strut around my apartment. El Camino is by far the best album for that task in a long time. It also passes the steering wheel test, the cooking dinner wooden spoon mic test, and the late-night headphone test. Only one artist in my circle of favorites can top that...

1. Ashes and Fire - Ryan Adams

Because "Lucky Now" is about as perfect as a song can get. And perfect Ryan Adams crushes me. Hope some artist out there does that for you.

The Year in Re-Brew: Devon's Top 10 of 2011

2011-12-31T13:09:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the year! Here's what I (Devon) listened to during 2011.

By Devon Booth

10. Various Artists -- Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Lakeshore Records, 2011

Movie of the Year! The songs with singing make you want to make out with slender girls who taste like beer, and by "you" I mean "me," and by "me" I mean "all the time."

Standout Track: Desire's "Under Your Spell." "I don't eat / I don't sleep / I do nothing but think of yoouuuuuuu...." Unrequited love. Ugh.

9. Feist -- Metals
Interscope, 2011

One night while Matt and I were up late talking about reviving The Heavy Duty and instant messaging each other YouTube links of St. Vincent and Karen O I thought, "You know what, I'm totally gonna buy that new Feist album." I enjoyed the holy heck of out of at least half of Leslie Feist's 2007 album The Reminder and I'd been a big fan of Metals lead-off "single" for a week or two, but that night I was so full of giddy excitement about being a music fan that a new Feist album seemed like it'd be not only a really great record but one that'd be even more fun to buy. Even if I'd only listen to it twice. And I was right! Metals is really great, and true to my prediction I've listened to it maybe thrice since I brought it home from the CD store. And, you know, I'm totally okay with that. It's really such a cool record, one that sounded great when I swept my floor and stared out the window, and one that sounded even more fantastic when I wore a scarf in my apartment and poured myself a drink. The last time I listened to it I sat on the couch and wrote pages and pages of notes in a legal pad about how much I enjoyed the songs and even more about how much I enjoyed the experience. Looking over those notes right now I see that they're half about great voices and cute bangs, and half about Bob Dylan and Depression-era hats. Hmmm. Maybe that's really all you need to know right there. Metals: neat songs and heavy thought fodder.

Actually, maybe the thing I like most about Metals is how every time I listen to it I think about how these songs might have evolved, where the writing process started, and where it finally stopped. See, The Reminder was mostly a singing and guitar album, but Metals has so many different stringy and clinky instruments that weave in and out, and songs that are sometime subdued and sometimes orchestrated, that I can't help but stop and wonder who brought what arrangement to the table or what the original scratch demos sounded like or why the whole thing is so beautiful and contemplative and interesting.
Then I go back to thinking about great voices, cute bangs, and Bob Dylan.

Standout Track: "Caught a Long Wind" Hey, why not? It's real pretty. Makes me want to pour a drink and rest your head on my shoulder.

8. Death Grips -- "Guillotine" (from Ex-Military)
self-released, 2011

Right after the first time I saw this video for "Guillotine" I hit replay and wound up watching the thing for the next twenty-five minutes. For something that's not graphic or obscene or NSFW, "Guillotine" was one of the more unsettling things I'd ever seen, and all it was was a guy in the passenger seat yelling and holding his head in his hands. It was all so strange and all so ordinary that I couldn't stop watching it. For all the madness and static in this video, it's still anchored by a the guy who's wearing his seat-belt for crying out loud. "Guillotine" is pure and it's paranoid, and it has a bunch of weird noises that remind me of those brown-note frequencies Gaspar Noe put into the beginning of Irreversible to make everyone in the movie theater nauseous. It's great stuff, and easily this year's viral video that never was.

Standout Track: You can download a whole Death Grips record right on their website. I've only sorta listened to it, but my good friend and sometimes-editor at MonsterFresh loves the entire thing. I hear-tell it samples Link Wray, Jane's Addiction, and "Rise Above."

7. Rick Shapiro -- Unconditional Love
Stand-Up! Records, 1998

Rick Shapiro's a maniac, which is probably why I can't get enough of him. I first heard him on Greg Fitzsimmons' podcast where for a full hour he stuttered through stories about drug addictions, making out with bag ladies, and sucking dick for heroin. I was hooked. I was intrigued. Who was this guy? Jesus. In the months since, I've listened to Unconditional Love over and over and over again and I'm still not sure if the guy's a stand-up genius, a filterless performance artist, or a horribly damaged soul hopped up on anti-psychotics and Antabuse. This album is twenty-two tracks of stream-of-consciousness rants about self-doubt and suffering, AA meetings and male prostitution, Starbucks and The Gap and as such I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that it's definitely not for everyone. I mean, I find the thing exhausting and I've been listening to it for a year and a half. Shapiro wanders from topic to topic with an oddly confident stammer and an overwhelming lack of cohesion, but the guy is as vulnerable and he is intense and he lays absolutely everything out there on the line, and out there onstage. His bits aren't even jokes. They don't have tags. They don't have punchlines. They're steeped in darkness and trauma, and yet they have a fearlessness and purity that are so infectious and energizing that I jump to my feet and grab a notebook every time I hear 'em. They make me think, "This, this is exactly what I want to do."

Guess that means Rick Shapiro really is a genius.

One who's hopped up on anti-psychotics and Antabuse.

Standout Track: "WBAI-FM" So this record starts off like this:

"Life seems so empty, you know why? Doesn't it? You know why? 'Cause you see it all over the place, all these expensive new products, everything costs more, all the prettier boys are making it. Prettier chicks, girls look skinnier and skinnier...like, sitcoms ain't funny but they're the number one rated show, you know what I mean? What the FUCK?!? There's nobody to talk to out there anymore, no, there's nobody to talk to out there anymore. It's like Rick, why don't you just calm down? Because every time you say 'Calm down' I get PISSED."

And it goes on and on and on from there for an hour. Shapiro's trains of thought start and stop and then he shouts lines like "I'm gonna fucking jizz all over that fucking flannel shirt," and "Maybe 'cause I've been stoned since age four, Pop. So what? You don't like being a dermatologist, I don't like being a Shapiro," and "Remember when it was a bush? Y'know, a bush. It looked like your grandmother was walking away backwards with a plate of lasagna THAT SHE MADE! HERSELF!" With that in mind "WBAI-FM" is the one track that stands out because as a minutes-long Maya Angelou-styled poem about post-Reconstruction-era soldiers, general stores, and tap-dancing for shortbread it is much much more light-hearted than the rest of Unconditional Love's fare. That said, the real beauty of this bit isn't in its coherence or that it actually feels written, but rather in its sheer exuberance and in Rick's clearly audible nervous energy and excitement. I love listening to this track because it's the one time in my life that I've felt like I was witness to true artistry and some kind divine improvisation; Shapiro caught lightning in a bottle for a few minutes up there and he's hanging on for dear life. The guy's on a roll and he takes it as far as he can, repeating the sounds of the rain (pit pat pit pat), the horses (clip clop clip clop), and the dogs at the screen door (scritch scratch scitch scratch) all while switching between characters, voices, and four-letter words. You can hear in his voice that he knows that the second he trips over his words and entire bit will fall apart and amount to less than nothing. But he never does. And it never does. Even today when I listen to this I almost forget where it's going or if it will even succeed because I can't help but get caught up in Shapiro's own passion and enthusiasm.

It's also pretty funny.

6. J Mascis -- "Circle" / "I've Been Thinking" 7" single
Sub Pop, 2011

This spring Dinosaur Jr's J Mascis put out his first real solo record, the acoustic Several Shades of Why. Now I'm a huge fan of everything the guy records, but my hands-down favorite part about this album's release was J's decision to include a cover of Edie Brickell's "Circle" into every single live show and onto every single college radio performance. It's really the perfect example of why I love J Mascis: he's a guy in acrylic Larry King glasses and a Discharge shirt playing a song from someone cool people don't take seriously, and he doesn't give a fuck. There's no digging deep here, and there's no need for motives or explanations. "Circle"'s just a great song that Mascis dug because twenty years ago someone played a New Bohemians tape in the van.

Standout Track: B-side "I've Been Thinking" is good too.

5. Silkworm -- "Bourbon Beard" (from Italian Platinum)
Touch and Go, 2002

I loved Silkworm when I was 16, but in 1998 when I'd just graduated high school and was looking for direction they put out Blueblood, a record I plain didn't like. From that point on I slowly lost faith in Silkworm as my Favorite Band. It was kinda sad to leave one of your bands behind, and don't get me wrong, I still appreciated their subsequent records during those next seven or eight years, but as much as I tried to fall in love with them it just never happened. Every record was...eh, okay. But then this year as I serendipitously became close friends with late Silkworm drummer (and "Bourbon Beard" vocalist) Michael Dahlquist's father Paul, and then as Matt and I started getting into a few whiskey-sippin' sessions of our own, I started thinking about my once-Favorite Band again and I started digging Italian Platinum off the shelf. And, strangely, this time around the songs on that record really meant something. Now that I've turned thirty I think I can finally get what the more mature Silkworm was doing during all that time I thought they were lame. Back in those "old" days, hell, I was just a twenty year old kid listening to the Deftones so of course I couldn't have related to a band of guys that were real adults, guys with real jobs and with musical aspirations that were only about writing songs that they thought were great and not about being on tour and changing the world. After ten years of hearing these tunes I finally grew into them. It took a long time, but I finally feel like I understand where Silkworm was coming from, why the albums sounded the way they did, and why the songs didn't have the bleating sadness or four-minute guitar solos like they used to. Being at this place in my life is both touching and inspiring, and I think it's neat to fall in love with my Favorite Band all over again. I guess sometimes you can go home again.

Standout Track: I like all the lyrics from "Bourbon Beard," but I think about this one most of all, "...I'd rather feel sleazy than desperate and crazed." Italian Platinum has plenty of other great songs too, like "Moving," a quiet bass- and drum-driven track that Pitchfork described as being "about moving in the unmetaphorical way that the Go-Gos' "Vacation" was about vacations."

4. Adrian Borland and The Sound -- 2 Meter Sessies
bootleg, 1987-1995

A few years ago I saw my all-time favorite singer Joel RL Phelps play a thirty minute set to a capacity crowd that didn't give two shits who he was or why he was onstage. Early on he intro'd one of the songs by saying, "This song is. By. The Sound," and I quickly took note. I'd previously heard Joel cover songs by bands like The Go-Betweens, Iris Dement, and Townes Van Zandt. They were all bands I'd never heard of, but all bands that I soon sought out and which equally as soon became some of my favorite artists.

So some time after that Joel Phelps show and after many many Google searches, I'd tracked down everything The Sound had officially recorded and released during their early-80s lifespan in the UK post-punk/Echo & the Bunnymen scene. I was real impressed with everything I'd heard, and their albums became late-night headphone-listening staples. I think there was an entire month or two where I didn't listen to anything but Adam Carolla podcasts and this audio of a show The Sound played in 1984. When I tired of that I listened to "Restless Time" (from 1985's Heads and Hearts) on repeat while I tried to come up with how best to tell the world how incredible I found the song's coda. Soon thereafter, I overdosed on The Sound and stopped listening to them altogether.

But then earlier this year some of their songs turned up on an iTunes shuffle. I remembered how much I'd listened to The Sound and how great I'd thought they were. I'd sort of forgotten how much songs like "Monument" and "Counting the Days" had meant to me and pretty soon The Sound was back in heavy rotation. I started reading about all of the music Adrian Borland, the band's singer/songwriter/guitarist, had released after The Sound broke up in 1987 and it seemed like there was no time like the present to go back onto the Google search and see what else the guy had to offer.

One of the first things I tracked down was this bootleg right here, 2 Meters Sessies, and from first listen I immediately thought it was just as good if not better than everything The Sound had released throughout their tenure. From what I can tell 2 Meter Sessies is a fan-made compilation of tracks that Borland had performed on a Dutch radio program over the course of a few years. It's nearly all songs from his post-The Sound career, and it's mostly all acoustic -- usually Adrian playing with one other guitarist and maybe with some other guy on the keyboards. I dunno, I mean I really don't have much to say about this record other than I totally dig it. I like the way it's so intimate and assured, and I love the way it showcases Borland's skill as a songwriter more than anything else.

I also like pretending that I'm the ONLY ONE who recognizes Borland's genius and that it's MY DUTY to evangelize him and his legacy.

I also like that it brings me one step closer to Joel Phelps.

Standout Track: "Beneath the Big Wheel" As much as I like "Lonely Late-Nighter" for being a self-reflexive and tender song about listening to self-reflexive and tender songs, it can't be the standout when something like "Beneath the Big Wheel" is so downright amazing. Dutch guitarist Wouter Planteijdt backs up Adrian with these perfectly-reverbed and perfectly-delayed parts that fade in and out at all right times and always sound incredible and always accentuate the song's vocal melodies and chord progressions that you can't help but be in awe. So awesome.

The song ends with Adrian's fingers squeaking off his guitar strings and I think that moment's cute. Kinda like how my favorite part in Nirvana's Unplugged in New York is when Kurt's guitar feeds back in "Man Who Sold the World."

3. Drawn Ship -- Low Domestic
Scratch Records, 2011

And while we're on the topic of Joel RL Phelps, last summer I was bored and I was logged into Twitter and I searched "Joel Phelps" just to see what I could find. And what I found was: "Drawn Ship: recommended if you like Cat Power and Joel RL Phelps." You better believe I clicked that link.

So Drawn Ship is a duo from Vancouver, BC, and beyond that I honestly don't know much about them. I bought Low Domestic on a whim because the songs sounded exactly like the music I imagined I myself playing when I plugged in my guitar at home, and I loved the fact that that was enough. All I needed to know was that Lyn Heinemann's guitar tone was gorgeous and her voice was beautiful, and that Gregg Steffensen's kit sounded incredible and he never played any inappropriate fills. I listened to this record all autumn long and what I started to love most about it was that in spite of it being about break-ups and family dogs that passed on it never once became hysterical or bombastic or uncomfortable, all things I most certainly can't say about the catalogs of Drawn Ship's alleged kin Chan Marshall or Joel Phelps. In fact, every single sound on this album is beautiful, clear, confident, and restrained. The songs don't want for anything and there's nothing that I'd ever suggest to improve them.

Standout Track: "Body Parts" has a bouncy guitar line and nice uplifting lyrics like "slowly like the bruise that bloomed when you hit me" and "now I drink whiskey in bed 'cause it helps me to sleep."

2. Jay Munly -- Jimmy Carter Syndrome
Smooch Records, 2002

I'd never even heard of Jay Munly until this past November when I saw him play a thirty-five minute opening set at Seattle's Tractor Tavern. Now that it's just over a month later I've probably listened to Munly's Jimmy Carter Syndrome somewhere around seventy-seven times. Seriously. This thing's been on repeat for the entire month of December. Jay Munly's an imposing figure: six-foot-something and a hundred and twenty pounds, with a ghostly pallor and sunken eyes and cheeks. I liked the guy the moment I saw him walk on stage that night, I dug the way he had slicked back red hair and a neckerchief, the way he stared right through everyone in the audience, and the way he didn't say a single goddamn word of thanks or acknowledgement between songs that seemed to all be about prizefighters, Old Testament parables, and frontier abortions. Jimmy Carter Syndrome is twelve songs, each one six-minutes deep, and Wikipedia says they're "Gothic Americana" which I think means they have violas and banjos and shitloads of half-drunk brooding and gallows-humor melancholia. I love this record's orchestration and its sense of folky timelessness, and I well up a little when I hear Munly's Nick Cave baritone break into an Appalachian yodel, but the greatest part about Jimmy Carter Syndrome is that it came out of nowhere and instantly became one my favorite things ever.

Standout Track: "Cooney Vs. Munly" I read this in the New York Times review of At the Fights: American Writers on Boxing, "Where there is risk there is drama, and boxers put more at risk than other athletes. In a single evening, they roll the dice with their health, marketability and sense of identity." So there you go. Munly sings a tale that mixes "Tutti Frutti"'s refrain with a backyard sparring session against the Great White Hope. It's heartbreaking. I think I've listened to it somewhere around one hundred seventy-seven times.

1. Cheeseburger -- Another Big Night Down the Drain
Williams Street Records, 2011

Cheeseburger's self-titled debut was a favorite here at the Heavy Duty a few years back. We were big fans of the band's then-labelmates Diamond Nights and The Sword, and after we read a complementary review of Cheeseburger in an issue of VICE, Matt and I knew we had a new favorite band on our hands. I'd kinda forgotten about them in the years since, only because I'd assumed they were a NYC one-off party band and they'd all gone back to their regular lives and jobs, so you can imagine my surprise when sometime this spring I opened up the local newsweekly and saw an ad for Another Big Night Down the Drain. "No way...that Cheeseburger?" I couldn't hit Amazon mp3 soon enough.

The Cheeseburger of 2011 is pretty much the same as Cheeseburger of 2007: three-minute snarly rawk tunes about hanging out, strutting the streets, and being a bad-ass while you drink beer from a can. But this time around they've augmented their lineup with a few new guys so alongside the Iggy Pop meets Keith Morris vocals and no-bullshit Marshall stack riffs, the songs on Another Big Night Down the Drain have basslines and bendy guitar solos.

My favorite part about this record isn't that it's tremendously fun garage rawk about boozin' and talking shit, or that it has some killer Quiet Riot drum breaks, or that it's super fucking funny and makes me smile, no, my favorite part is that the minute I heard these songs all I wanted was to drive around town with Matt so we could drum on the dashboard, point as passing cars, and high-five about how much we love this band.

Standout Track: "Roll Like That" It's a tough call. Come on, I mean as much as I want to pick "Winner" with its Billy Idol-esque fist-pumping tempo and ultra-classic vainglorious lyrics ("I hit a home run right over your fucking head" and "I blow a kiss to your momma"), I can't ignore "Roll Like That," an undeniably catchy tune about being a loser and a bum and owing back rent and being lousy in the sack. It'd be a goddamn great song even without the few bars of The Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" tacked onto the fade-out. Can't get much better than that.

See y'all next year.

The Duty's Live Evil -- Dinosaur Jr!

2011-12-31T12:10:00.000-08:00

Dinosaur Jr // Pierced Arrows
Showbox, Seattle
December 17, 2011

Growing a beard is probably the greatest thing J Mascis has ever done. I seriously love it, and not just because I've been growing a beard my own damn self, but because it lets everyone know that J Mascis means BUSINESS. It's easy to underestimate the guy, and for longer than I've been listening to Dinosaur Jr I feel like everyone has sold J short. With the way he speaks and the way he sings he's inadvertently fooled the world into thinking he's lazy and high, and that his records are tossed-off excuses to play guitar solos. But this couldn't be further from the truth. Mascis is not only a fantastic lyricist and a great singer, but he's always recording and he's always on tour. Always. During those years before the Dinosaur Jr reunion, J crossed the country, like, four times, and then he went to Europe, Japan, New Zealand, and back all the way back to Europe. He got Mike Watt back on his feet after the guy almost died from a scrotum infection and he instigated The Stooges reunion. He also bought a ton of vintage gear. How awesome.

So the beard? It's the visual representation of the J that was always there, the one that we sorta forget about because he has a double chin and a wolf shirt, the one that was overshadowed by years of interviews laden with monosyllablic answers that had thirty-five second pauses between them. Hopefully this new Mountain Man J will evoke in the world a greater respect for his own gravitas and contemplation. When a song reads "She's my post to lean on / but I just cut her down" it's a weighty statement, and something much better-served by a guy who looks like this:

Instead of a guy who like this:

Setlist: Thumb / BUG: Freak Scene / No Bones / They Always Come / Yeah We Know / Let It Ride / Pond Song / Budge / The Post / Don't / Encore: In A Jar / Out There / Feel the Pain / Just Like Heaven / Forget the Swan

(live image courtesy of Flickr user EMPMuseum)

The Month in Bedroom Covers

2011-12-31T11:20:00.000-08:00

(Bedroom Covers is a Tumblr page where I collect videos of people playing cover songs on their webcams. Once a month I'll post a few of my favorites here on The Heavy Duty.)

Van Halen - "Panama"
YouTube user googxmsr

Sometimes I post a video just because I like the guy's house.

Beck - "Puttin' It Down"
YouTube user MrBeatleslover

And sometimes I post a video because I want to link to one I already posted. "Puttin' It Down" is one of my favorite Beck songs, and I really dig this kid in his The Who t-shirt, but I mostly just wanted people to click the "Beck" tag and watch the "E-Pro/Soul-Sucking Jerk" twofer I put on Bedroom Covers last February.

Morrissey - "The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get"
YouTube user horse476505046

Other times I post something because the person did something sorta interesting, like this kid who recorded his own reflection from the mirrors on his closet door. That's kinda neat, and it makes it look like he's super-duper shy which only adds to the "awwwww factor" of playing a Morrissey song in the bedroom he grew up in.

Starland Vocal Band - "Afternoon Delight"
YouTube user kingbuzzo15

Lately the thing I've been doing is trying to think of songs that aren't by Morrissey or Danzig or Kyuss so that I can get some variety on this page and keep from wearing myself out. Problem is, I'm really only familiar with Morrissey and Danzig and Kyuss. If I posted covers of Airborne Toxic Event or Owl City that would be disingenuous since I don't actually "know" any those songs. So sometimes you'll just have to put up with Starland Vocal Band or Leslie Gore or fIREHOSE.

(Follow Bedroom Covers on Tumblr and Twitter. Submissions always welcome.)

You're Doing It Wrong: Michael Foley on The Year in Music

2011-12-27T20:00:00.000-08:00

For The Heavy Duty's "Breast of 2011," Matt and Dev are inviting a few friends to share their thoughts on the year's best music.

By Michael Foley

Upon getting the kind request to contribute some thoughts on The Year In Music 2011 to The Duty (Heavy being so implied amongst those in the know as to be rendered almost redundant, but everyone has to start somewhere right?), it was cause for me to contemplate how the method(s) we consume our music and our entry points to the bands we like/love/loathe can influence us well after the initial blush of audio adoration.

Then I thought that is awfully damn pretentious.

Look, we like what we like. We can over-think it as much as we want, believe me. Does it matter if it's because that solo "rocked" or if the singer is pretty or if they didn't sign with a major? Maybe, depends on what we bring to the table when we turn the player up or down, on or off (only old farts still turn the station and no one turns the channel). Here's some of what I found at the table this year.

1. For all the talk about The Death Of The Album As A Platform For Listening To Music, two things: why was it impossible for anyone* to NOT have an opinion about Watch The Throne (a really good stopgap EP by 'Ye after My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that was stretched into an album by having Hova on it)? Second, did we all collectively decide we hate Lulu from LouTallica without listening to it? I've managed to get through it three times. Some interesting moving parts that sporadically add up to an actual good song over the course of 80-plus minutes, but I wonder why everyone seemingly decided it was a one-point-whatever-Pitchfork-gave-it. How many people dismissed it out of hand without actually listening to the damn thing? Was it just easier to do the math: Pretentious Art Rocker Unafraid To Piss Fans Off + Metal Band Unafraid To Piss Fans Off = Album To Piss On? If TDOTAAAPFLTM (I like acronyms, however unwieldy) is true, why all the attention (good and bad) for two examples of something that doesn't matter any more?

*--Except my mother.

2. I am overjoyed at how much the Big Four** has gone about their collective victory lap. Dave finally got to do better on Billboard than James and Lars (arguably addled by Lou, but still), Slayer managed to Keep It Real by playing the shows and have people anticipate another album which will sound drastically similar to every other Slayer album, Anthrax managed to put out their latest "comeback" album and it far exceeded the "it doesn't suck" threshold." Finally, Metallica proved it still was/is the first among equals with the world's heaviest 30th anniversary party, a great EP and the promise of more to come.

**--If you don't know who the Big Four, in all sincerity, what the fuck are you doing reading this?

3: I'm eschewing the usual Best Of format because (for various reasons) most of what I listened to this year wasn't from this year. I can claim to have acquired the three most discussed albums of the year, though. Having discussed two of them already in some depth, let me sum up briefly on Adele's 21. Firstly, I'm glad it continues the sneaky comeback of Dan "Closing Time" Wilson into all of our lives. Lastly, she's okay at being the latest iteration of Dusty Springfield and all, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for her to put out a Dusty In Memphis for the 21st century.

4. It says something sad about us as a society that a band I love (The Roots) doing a snippet of a cover of a song I love ("Lyin' Ass Bitch") by a band I love and have loved for over 20 years (Fishbone) and correctly applying said song to a person I do not love at all (Michele Bachmann) adds up to something so unlovable. I look forward to getting their latest masterwork at some point, just to be clear. The Roots have never let me down musically, but that whole situation can't help but leave a bad aftertaste.

Earlier this year, I actually got a live bootleg of a show Fishbone did in France around the release of Truth And Soul (for such a legendarily awesome live band, the closest thing to a classic full-length they have ever mustered). Funnily enough, it had "Lyin' Ass Bitch" on it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they introduced the song with a "disclaimer" to clear up any misconceptions the audience might've had about its lyrical content. Y'know, the sort of thing the Spin Doctors have to do with 'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" or Stone Temple Pilots with 'Sex Type Thing." Also unsurprisingly, the audience didn't care and enjoyed the song. Maybe because they were able to figure it out for themselves? Either that or because they were French. Whatever.

5. Mad props to Fucked Up, who put out an amazing album in David Comes To Life. I love it when bands have a title track for an album not be on the album. The only other two bands I can think of that did this are The Smithereens and Queens Of The Stone Age. I assume it was because it would've broken up the motif of every song on the album having a three-word title. If Gravity Kills got made fun of for having an album with every song only having a one-word title (how 1996 of them, I know), does this constitute progress or just inflation of rhetoric? In all seriousness, the fact that they managed to make a Concept Album that sounds more like The Who than Green Day in 2011 deserves to be recognized. You can actually go in depth with the meta-concept all the way through to getting the "bonus album of music bands that exist in the world created by the band for the record" or you can just appreciate the marvel that is a great rock album. No amount of fileswapping or downloading or pouting over their unwieldy name can take away what they did here, and if they really do break up because of it? They were smart enough to go out on top, those wacky Canadians.

6. Speaking of wacky Canadians, probably the last place my "best of 2011" thoughts can legitimately coincide (after Watch The Throne and Fucked Up) with anything you'll see in any rational list has to be with the Weeknd. I honestly am not sure if I've ever heard a complete song by Drake, that's how damn curmudgeonly I can get. That said, as unpromising as describing as Goth-Rap can be, his producers are to be noted for making Club Rap you can not take Vitamin C to. Or snort cocaine. Or wear black. Or some combination thereof. Whatever the kids going to clubs (Hip-Hop or Goth) are into these days. I stay in and watch hockey games while listening to to the Foo Fighters, so I wouldn't know.

7. While we're (sorta) on the subject? Maybe I've watched too much (if not all of) Back And Forth. Maybe I'm too excited by the notion of the 20th Anniversary Of The Year Punk Broke (I can finally replace my Nevermind cassette with the reissue box set!!). Maybe I spent too much of the last decade living in Seattle. Whatever the case, I am willing to cosign on the concept of the Foo Fighters being an Important Rock Band. I know they're easy to dismiss as The Little Semi-On-Purpose Solo Project That Could. I wouldn't suggest they should be anyone's favorite band, certainly not when somewhere between practically any member of the band can claim time spent in a band as good or possibly better (like a Bizarro World Velvet Revolver). Even if this year's model from them wasn't their finest, it delivers in the manner we've come to expect from them. When you get a Foo Fighters album you are getting two things: Full-on rockers that don't forsake melody for noise (however manicured at times) and mid-tempo slow burns with crafty flourishes. Yes, they're so stuck in those two modes they made a double album devoted to the fact that they make basically two types of song and gave each "mode" its own whole disc. It doesn't mean they aren't more consistent than any rock band this side of AC/DC or Sonic Youth, nor that their songs actually deserve to be as overplayed as they usually are. Why hold the fact that they tend to be the Token Rock Band In The Mainstream against them? Bad enough Metallica gets that shit for being the Token Metal Band In The Mainstream. It's enough to make you wonder if hard and heavy bands are ever going to be allowed to get big anymore without being neutered to the degree of a Nickelback or a Maroon 5.

8. A moment for the Ongoing Death Of The Record Label, if you please. Yes, it's easy to hate on how crappy labels can be and there's not much point in reciting all the ways they suck. But I just wanted to take a few lines to talk about how cool they can be sometimes. It can be something like Southern Lord with their excellent Sonic Cathedrals series ( MP3s of "mixtapes" curated by top underground metal folks...and Sonic Youth) or Dischord giving you free downloads of songs from other bands on top of the already-included download coupons in their vinyl (I got two free Egg Hunt tracks with my Minor Threat 12") or something as simple as the way whoever keeps those classic albums from Blue Note so damn cheap. It may sound too old-fashioned, but knowing you're buying an album out of Brand Loyalty is becoming more rare a bird. No matter how you consume your music, that's probably not a good thing.

9. If you say you can't find anything new or are bored with listening to music, kindly shut the fuck up. Fine, everything you hear at the gym or on the radio or wherever sucks, I get it. You know what? It means you're lazy and not trying anymore, so stop bothering those of us who are still trying to whatever degree. Those three albums by The Weeknd I mentioned earlier? All of them are free. Went to the best record shop in Wilmington, North Carolina yesterday, saw a flyer a band Caddywhompus put out. They put out a four-song EP for free. Above-average noise-pop from someplace, no idea where, doesn't matter. They took the time to entice me and they've got a permanent spot on my iTunes. Hell, might even try to go see 'em sometime. At least they're trying.

If you don't like what's out there, keep looking. Go to Daytrotter, find some Beards 'N' Glasses Indie Folk*** there. That Fishbone album I mentioned an hour ago? Found it for free at Archive.org. They have literally thousands of albums from bands available for download. It'll help if you like Jam Bands and second-string '90s rockers, but there's enough Ryan Adams for every person who ever stepped foot in Onslow County, North Carolina.

***--They actually have a lot of other stuff there, it'll just SEEM like every band there is made of pasty bearded white people.

10. Speaking of the most famous rocker ever to come from Action Jacksonville, I finally got two albums by Ryan Adams. Readers of the Duty know this guy is kind of a Big Deal around here, and I am glad to be more in the know about the guy. That's the other half of the point I was starting to get to with my previous point: they're always someone out there making new music you will probably really like. Maybe it takes you over a decade to get to sometimes, like Ryan did to me. Maybe you grew up with it. Who knows. Just love what you listen to as much as you can, otherwise what's the point?

11. As big a Smithereens fan as I am, I've yet to bring myself to buy Smithereens 2011. Maybe next year.

Hope you came out alright in 2011, and good luck and good listening in 2012.

Michael Foley lives in lovely North Carolina. Despite his various strong opinons, he does not want to tell you how to live your life . You can follow him on Twitter @wrymfterrill.

I Got The Shakes: My Song of The Year

2011-12-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

I'm still banging away at my year's top ten album list, elevating (in my mind) its importance to Magna Carta or even the original screenplay for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure levels. A historic document indeed! So how about my song of the year while you wait!

Stumbling upon Alabama Shakes on an early Saturday morning was my favorite musical moment of the year. Something just clicked instantly, like I've been a fan of this band forever. With its clean guitar tones, rolling 60's-esque bass lines, and of course singer Brittany Howard's soulful pleading croon, "I Found You" just knocked me out. I love when music becomes this sort of unexplainable magical mystical emotional gut punch, which only happens when you least expect it. That is a nice recipe for a song of the year.

Happy Holidays from The Duty!

List 'O Top Six: My Favorite Tangentially Music Related Things of 2011

2011-12-20T22:11:00.000-08:00

I'll be posting my top albums of 2011 sometime next week, but I had a few extra things I loved that were sort of related to my voracious music consumption that weren't "albums," thus disqualified. So here's a List 'o Top Six that helped put 2011 over the top and made it my favorite "music" year since 2006, which was my first year in Seattle and the saw the genesis of this very website:

6. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Fallon owns the late night music scene, no questions asked. The Roots, the impressions, the theme weeks and more. Just plain fun. And all the clips are online the next morning, so I don't have to stay up until 1:25am to watch! My favorite clip of the year:

5. Guitars! - I started working for a guitar pickup company this year, and talking shop all day trying to help old dudes sound like Stevie Ray Vaughn brought me back into the world of hardcore gear lust I thought I'd left behind. Now I stalk websites like Wilcutts Guitar Shoppe and Humbucker Music daily, lurking for new inventory and obsessing over each guitar like it was the Ark of the Covenant.

4. The Drive Soundtrack - Okay, so this album should make my top ten list of 2011, this is kind of cheating. But as a soundtrack, it's made a different kind of presence than a normal record would. The ghost-like trance and pulse of these songs have kept the film ever present in my thoughts. So now I revisit Ryan Gosling caving a man's face in with his big boot and Albert Brooks' Fork of Doom every time I hear those keyboards swirling. Beautiful.

3. Mouse Rat's "5000 Candles in the Wind" - Pour one out for Li'l Sebatian, may he trade his legs for angel's wings.

2. Spotify - I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and here it is again: I can buy the cd when I want to beat the shit out of my steering wheel, I'll grab a the mp3 off Amazon when it is an artist I already dig, and I'll fill in all the edges and randomness with Spotify. I love it when a plan comes together.

1. Chuck Klosterman's music video breakdowns on Grantland: These two posts on Edgar Winter Group's "Frankenstein" and Led Zeppelin's "In The Evening" are everything I've ever wanted The Heavy Duty to be, done by the master himself. I had metaphorical tears running down my face while reading, it's like the man was looking straight into my soul. These pieces capture exactly how and why I love music. If you somehow come across this Chuck, please make this a monthly feature. And do one on "Lick it Up," if you don't mind.

The Thing That Should Not B-Sides

2011-12-19T10:18:00.000-08:00

One of the worst things about being a huge Metallica fan (besides the unrelenting hate from former fans) is the lack of awesome original b-sides to show off our superior fandom. We never had any deep band cuts like "Crazy Mary," "Soul to Squeeze," or "The Fun Machine Took a Shit and Died." to hail as the band's best and try and out-obscure causal fans. The only thing Metallica has ever released that was an original song and not on a proper album was "I Disappear," for the Mission Impossible II Soundtrack, and that was specifically written for the movie.

For a band that is so popular with regular dudes, not having a go-to argument winner to show off my extreme fandom has always been a bummer. Sure, I could have gone with one of their many sweet cover songs or maybe even go beyond pretentious and picked a live version of a "Creeping Death," but somehow I think everybody would see through all that. Until Metallica finally decided to put out the four Death Magnetic leftovers this week as the EP Beyond Magnetic, I was on the same playing field as everyone else despite my unrelenting devotion to El Cerrito's loudest band.

I don't think the band recorded a single note of song that didn't make on to an album until the Presido Sessions that let to the Some Kind of Monster documentary and St. Anger. Lots of band upheaval during that era led to tons of material being shelved that still hasn't seen a release (and after what made St. Anger, this is probably a good thing.) Uber Metallica nerds know of plenty of random riffs from this era that never made it onto an album, none more whispered about than "Shadow of the Cross." Metallica fans are so starved for this shit somebody edited together snippets of studio footage from teaser clips into an almost song.

So the bountiful feast of leftover cuts unleashed digitally last week is awesome, but not unexpected. During the recording sessions of Death Magnetic, the band posted tons of teaser vids with riffs and snippetts that never made into on to the album. So we've know for at least four years some new songs could appear at anytime.

Cynics have suggested (and they're probably correct) that this release was not timed to coincide with their 30th Anniversary shows, but more to try and wash out that nasty taste that most fans had swirling around their mouths from the Lulu experiment. Either way, four new Metallica songs are always a welcome addition to my iTunes. Not sure yet if any of these will end up as an all-timer, but I like finally having the option of a truly deep album cut. Let's run them down and see what works, what doesn't, and realize that these songs probably all didn't make the album because the lyrics are pretty awful.

Hate Train - A nice full blow burner, with elements of "Fuel" and Kill 'Em All style pukey Kirk solos splattering all over the place. Great clean chorus section and a some great classic breakdown riffing that leads into the main guitar solo. I'd waiting to hear this song for awhile, it was prominently featured in the very first "Mission Metallica" trailer. Well worth the wait.

Just a Bullet Away - Metallica meets Pantera via Lamb of God style groove-metal riffing with more awful lyrics. Pretty sweet out-of-nowhere clean middle section done "Master of Puppets" style, with James playing the solos. Always welcome when he shoves Kirk's vibrato aside and lets loose. A winner in my book, should have made room for this one on DM.

Hell and Back - Beside the main heavy riff that propels this song, most of it is pretty forgettable. Not hard to see how this one didn't make the cut. The song structure is very similar to "The Day that Never Comes," which has a better rip-roaring finish than this track. Should have snuck that riff into another song down the line.

Rebel of Babylon - Now we are talking! This is some shit right here. Nice and burly, with great riffs peppered throughout the entire song, but the creme de le creme is the breakdown chorus riff that is just pure classic NWOBHM, with James roaring "TOOOOOONIIIIIIIGHT!!!! Kill me one more TIE-YYYTIIIIME!" Very Mercyful Fate and fucking great.

Aaron Shipp Tells The Year in Music to "Fuck Off"

2011-12-18T16:20:00.000-08:00

For The Heavy Duty's "Breast of 2011," Matt and Dev are inviting a few friends to share their thoughts on the year's best music.

By Aaron Shipp

I'm going to get two things out of the way, right off the bat. (1) I had a shit year and (2) because I had a shit year, most of what I listened to in 2011 reflects a mood that one who is experiencing such a time might carry. I'll spare you all the elaborate elucidation in regard to why my year can best be defined by a common term for feces. Its commonality, its overall lack of exception, is partly why it was so shitty. So there's no need for me to try and spruce up, for your entertainment, a disinterestingly shitty year. I'll focus instead on my favorite albums of the year and why they, not necessarily bested anything else out there but, served an integral purpose in my surviving 2011.
I'm over thirty years old which means my spare time is spent thinking about how awesome I used to be, and how those younger than me are finally cool, not babbling idiots. The ability to connect with new music has weakened somewhat as contemporary acts either sound like a lesser version of something I grew up with or simply connect to their fan base in ways I find juvenile. Imagine my comfort when a friend turned me on to Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. Who needs a Kyuss reunion (sort of)? Blood Lust is stoner rock straight from the desert that soothes my elderly musical stylings while laying down that edgy dark undertone that incites youthful rebellion. Go on, Deadbeats. Toss poppa some sugar.
On Earth 2, I live in Germany and long ago achieved my dream of being a successful entrepreneur. My chain of theme restaurants, all centered around the works of beloved playwright Dikembe Mutombo, are as well known as our McDonalds. Bohren & der Club of Gore’s Beileid plays softly on repeat through the house speakers in every one of these eateries. Bohren did more with three songs than most bands do with entire careers. You need know nothing more of this band than the 35 minutes of this album. It's rare when a band knows themselves so well and are unafraid to sit in their own skin for three sauntering and breathy songs.

Mastodon followed up the heady and ambitious Crack the Skye with the only album they could: a give-no-shits compilation of pedestrian (by their standards) riffage with lyrics that are somehow nuttier than those found on an album called Blood Mountain. It's a really fun album once you realize where the band is coming from and allow yourself to, essentially, enjoy the slides from Mastodon's existential vacation. People will forever refer to The Hunter by Mastodon as a step back but it's so totally not (ohmygod, right?). The Hunter is Mastodon refined, boiled down to their sweetest sugars and dipped around a licorice whip.

Protest the Hero seemed to suffer the opposite criticism as Mastodon with Scurrilous. Suddenly talkin' 'bout chicks and cancer was too somber for Protest the Hero. I, on the other hand, had been hoping for a more realistic approach from this band for some time and they fucking delivered. It's one thing to sing about goddesses and do so creatively. That's great. It's another thing to talk about some real shit and do so with a razor sharp disdain. The difference between layin' down a bitch and dropping some knowledge is whether or not you can, well, protest something intelligently. A band this talented, when calling you a perv for watching internet porn, suddenly makes you consider your station. I like that.
Russian Circles put out a new album and it’s great. It's more fantastic music from Russian Circles. Here’s the thing though: while listening to it on Spotify, I was recommended a band called Long Distance Calling. That band has swept through my (and my friends’) playlists like a flammable Santa Anna gust. Both of their albums, which pre-date 2011, have been on steady rotation and would be nominated for band of the year in a discussion forsaking actual measurements of time. Since that’s not the case here, Russian Circles - Empros gets a nod for their album introducing me to, possibly, my favorite find of 2011.
While we’re on the subject of metal and its only tolerable sub-genre anymore, I once again profess my undying appreciation. Whatever we're calling it now, I hope it doesn't go anywhere. I need, NEED DAMN YOU, the release that comes from metal but cannot bring myself to listen to any more trite, pseudo-violent lovesick drivel. Come at me with either the most nonsensical wizardry or a soundtrack to real regret. Enough with the misogyny. It's been a golden age for metal over the last ten years if you've known where to look. Mouth of the Architect, The Ocean, Giant Squid, I could go on but it would only serve to dilute my point, which is this: The Atlas Moth’s An Ache for the Distance is another example of true orchestration within a genre that isn't universally known for measured, thoughtful production. Give it a listen and put the Whitechapel to rest.

Much like Klaxons last year, Wild Poppies by The Mast served as a pleasant default whenever nothing new piqued my interest. I can’t discern for you a unique or special trait within the album that demands your attention. It’s not an exceptional album. It is, however, consistent and pleasant. The Mast provide a chill, female shoegazer option when I desperately needed to get LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It” out of my head. (And damn each one of you monsters that popularized that song, that permeated every aspect of my life with cries of “I work out!”. You grisly detriments of the human experience have conceived more woe than a baker’s dozen of surprisingly stale donuts.)
All in all, 2011 was a bust for music. If you’re keeping track, I’ve only named seven albums that I felt were worthwhile. Fucked Up, Kurt Vile, SUBTRKT were all fine I guess but nothing more than mediocre. Hell, even Radiohead could only muster an average album this year. We should’ve known, after “Morning Mr Magpie” started, that standards needed immediate reduction.
Aaron Shipp is a writer living in Omaha. Catch up on his various projects at shipp.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @aaronlshipp.

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: Golden Bears Edition

2011-12-11T12:49:00.001-08:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III" - Godspeed You Black Emperor I'd probably still listen to this if it didn't have that crazy-man rant running the whole time.

9. "Molting" - Cephalic Carnage FUCK! Hey iTunes, gimme some warning next time you're gonna transition into screaming blast beats like that.

8. "Rolodex Propaganda" - At the Drive-In Relationship of Command is such a great album, but when I hear these songs I can't think of anything but sitting in my dorm room at UC Berkeley. Kind of a bummer that I'll never listen to this record again.

7. "Out of This World" - Black Flag Black Flag is the incredible. Truly one of my favorite bands, but I've never ever been able to get into Damaged. At all. I actually think I prefer Family Man. Weird.

6. "Little Dolls" - Ozzy Osbourne And speaking of Berkeley, I bought a used copy of Ozzy's Diary of a Madman the second day I moved to campus. That and the first Van Halen album. Wasn't until day four that I bought a bargain copy of Anthrax's Spreading the Disease.

5. "The Park" - Feist I really ought to write a Two Months In on Feist's Metals.

4. "Pieces" - Dinosaur Jr Matt and I are going to see Dinosaur Jr next Saturday. Sometimes I hear myself playing guitar and I wonder if it's obvious to others how much and how long I've listened to this band.

3. "10" - Rikk Agnew My friend Sam loved that blue Adolescents album when we were teenagers. He gave me a copy along with some Rikk Agnew stuff, and I guess I've listened to it a lot more than I think I have 'cause I know this song inside and out. Agnew's band called Poop they put out a really awesome EP a few years back. They play at a punk club here in town every few months it seems and I sometimes regret it a little when I don't go.

2. "Chaplin's Radiotelephone" - Joel RL Phelps the Downer Trio A number of years ago I saw the Downer Trio's Robert Mercer play guitar and it changed my life. I've been talking about that tone ever since.

1. "Without Wings" - Corrosion of Conformity Always nice to end a Cool Down with an acoustic interlude.

Waaaay Too Much Duty For One Day

2011-12-06T21:22:00.000-08:00

I knew going in today would be a great day in DutyLand, with The Black Keys' El Camino and The Roots' Undun dropping at the same at your local independent music store. I was all set to pick them up after class, head home, and dive right into two albums that are locks for my top ten. That alone would be a fantastic music day. But then I awoke to the internet aflutter with two old heavy metal favorites trying to win back my garage rocked soul and a Ryan Adams live stream on Letterman! Holy overload, Batman! Let's hit it.

First up is "Hate Train," an unreleased Metallica track from the Death Magnetic sessions. Besides the goofy lyrics, this song rips! Holy Jeebus I'm a sucker for this band. They played it live last night during the first of four amazing 30th Anniversary shows at the Fillmore. Can't wait to see what they've got left for the rest of the shows.

Now that you've hopped off the hate train, how about some new Lamb of God? This track hits right around the time I kinda forgot about them. Great timing. Pretty standard stuff for these guys, but a welcome return nonetheless.

And to top it all off, here's Ryan Adams performing "Live on Letterman" for a full hour. If you read my Benaroya Hall show review a couple of months back, this was pretty much what I got to experience. Check it out:

This Month in Amazon $5 Downloads: December

2011-12-01T17:22:00.001-08:00

To The Sea - Jack Johnson Some people like vanilla ice cream. Jack Johnson is cardboard ice cream.

The Shepard's Dog - Iron and Wine When I was typing this out, I automatically added an extra "g" on dog.

The Queen is Dead - The Smiths A good place to get started if for some reason you've ignored Moz till this point in your life.

How I Got Over - The Roots I'll never understand why there aren't a million other bands ripping these guys off. Should be its own genre.

Kid A - Radiohead BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

Holy Diver - Dio I like this album more than any Black Sabbath record.

Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere - Doug Stanhope Buy this just because Doug was awesome on Louie.

Songs and Stories - Guy Clark $5 for 23 songs! Folksy stories! Grandpa haunts!

The Downward Spiral - Nine In Nails What are you waiting for! Get yourself a free sampler of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Soundtrack here!

The Month in Bedroom Covers

2011-11-30T21:47:00.001-08:00

(Bedroom Covers is a Tumblr page where I collect videos of people playing cover songs on their webcams. Once a month I'll post a few of my favorites here on The Heavy Duty.)

Joe Walsh - "Life's Been Good"
YouTube user 55bobjoe

So many reasons to love this video, but I can't enough of this this priceless comment from YouTube user iluvmyaxe:

"YYYYYYAAAAAAAAAA NOW UR ROCKING MATE ALOT BETTER SINCE THE FIRST COVER I BET THOSE GIRLS ARE STANDING IN LINE ! KEEP ROCKING LITTLE MAN U NEED A HAT AND SOME SHADES !"

Ha! "A hat and some shades!" The pinnacle of cool!

KISS - "Strutter"
YouTube user Jayhogster

Acoustic KISS from your living room is exactly what I want on Bedroom Covers, but, goddamn, at 2:34 when this guy's 4 year-old daughter comes twirling and dancing into frame? Probably the cutest thing ever. Dad doesn't even break a sweat 'cause he knows it's YouTube gold.

Built to Spill - "Carry the Zero"
YouTube user Amevintosh

Solid song, solid rendition, but come on, man, a shirtless BCov? You're trying way too hard.

Babes in Toyland - "Bruise Violet"
YouTube user SlayerJan15

I had absolutely no idea when I posted the Babes' 1992 "hit single!" that it would yield so many "likes" and re-tumblrs. I just thought it'd be a funny callback to when I was 13 and bought Spanking Machine because I'd just watched 1991: The Year Punk Broke. I'm still pretty surprised at all the attention this vid received. I mean, I even got a few hits from KatBjelland.com. Who knew Babes in Toyland were still such a hot ticket?

(Follow Bedroom Covers on Tumblr and Twitter. Submissions always welcome.)

Feel the Power of Christmas All Around You

2011-11-30T18:59:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again, when Christmas music rains down like agent orange on a public taken hostage by sleigh bells ring-ding-a-linging. It's good old-fashioned holiday capitalism brainwashing and we're all fucked. The only people that like this slop are either a sociopath or your Aunt Susan or both. Stating the obvious that Christmas music is awful is not exactly a groundbreaking position that needs to be shouted from the Twitter-tops. All the complaining is just a grating as the music itself.

Time for a fresh look. Embrace the awful. Crank that shit until it feels like Santa is plunging a sharpened shiv-like candy cane directly into your face. Fight fire with goddamn fire. It's not worth the effort to battle the overwhelming yule-tide, better to be a goddamn irritating contrarian. Trust me, being an unbearable asshole about how awesome the new Beiber or Buble Christmas albums are is way more fun than running with the mainstream and ripping Rudolph a new one. Feel the power of Frosty all around you and let the schlock consume your soul.

Take it Billy Mack!

New Music Tuesday: Oof Times Two Edition

2011-11-22T23:03:00.001-08:00

50 Words for Snow - Kate Bush And none of them is "kajagoogoo."

Talk That Talk - Rhianna Had no idea that she was just a disco queen. I guess I expected something else.

Break the Spell - Daughtry I was more of a Bo Bice guy anyway.

My Life II... The Journey Continues (Act 1) - Mary J. Blige That album title is a mouth full.

Bruiser - The Duke Spirit Hey, something that might be good! Check it out.

Here and Now - Nickelback Took this new album for a quick spin on Spotify and my girlfriend yelled "what the hell are you listening to" with intese distain in her voice. All you need to know. Check out their first single off the new record and all least get all uplifted and shit.

We Would Have Gone With "Santa But True"

2011-11-22T21:30:00.001-08:00

Presented without comment.

Sunday Cool Down Shuffle - "Why You Wear Those Glasses? So I Can See" Edition

2011-11-20T11:15:00.001-08:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Accelerator" - The Dwarves One time I paid $15 to see The Dwarves. They played for 25 minutes. That was, like, two albums' worth of songs.

9. "Good Morning" - Cage Yo La Tengo plays on this tune. Those guys any good?

8. "Twilight" - Elliott Smith I was really into Elliott Smith during the summer I worked at the music library and took that class on the Sociology of Childcare. "Twilight" is the only good song from the record that came out after Smith stabbed himself to death.

7. "Here We Go (Live at the Funhouse)" - Run DMC - Rhymes so fresh, rhymes, rhymes galore / Rhymes that you never even heard before / Now if you say you heard my rhymes, we gonna hafta fight / 'Cause I just made the motherfuckers up last night

6. "I'm a Little Airplane" - Jonathan Richman If I drove you to high school, we listened to this song.

5. "Skink" - Sonic Youth And speaking of high school...Sonic Youth!

4. "Last House on the Left" - Cage Unfortunately, not about the movie.

3. "Play It Loud" - Diamond Head Will do!

2. "Apology Accepted" - The Go-Betweens The first Go-Betweens song I ever heard. This song might be about sex.

1. "The Ladder in My Blood" - Scott Kelly Scott Kelly is playing at the Tractor next week. You think I should go? I think I probably will.

Click here for this playlist on Spotify, and here for "Last House on the Left" by Cage.

Plantin' Trees With Johnny D.

2011-11-19T16:26:00.001-08:00

I'm taking an Environmental Science class in community college, and as part of the curriculum I have to perform 16 hours of service learning with an organization of my choice. So I'm working with People for Puget Sound, and in typical Heavy Duty fashion it's for one ridiculous reason. A majority of their events involve tree planting, and as a kid I loved this PSA John Denver did about planting trees and in general being a great friend of the earth. It's one of those random childhood echoes that continues to stick with me, like a good jingle should. "Plant a tree, for youuuuur tomorrow" is seared into my brain, so I might as well run with it make it the real thing.

Which is not a bad deal. I get to go outside in the picturesque Pacific Northwest, get myself all dirty and sweaty, improving my life and the community at the same time. All while singing this song in my head. I guess that John Denver wasn't full of shit.

Spotify the Black Circle

2011-11-16T19:44:00.001-08:00

Pearl Jam's Live at Benaroya Hall has been haunting me for years. I lost it years ago when I got divorced, I somehow ended up with their entire catalog except that two-disc set. Although the entirety of that transaction was a success overall, I've always wanted to get that album back in my collection. For some reason I've never secured it in my music buying adventures over the last six years. Never stumbled across a used copy, and I didn't feel like shelling out $20 for a new copy for the second time and even the mp3 copy on Amazon is a bit much.

Funny thing is, I've had free access to it for about six months now and it never occurred to me. That's the true power of Spotify, and why it is the game-changer I'd didn't even know I was looking for. Amazon, Apple, and Google have launched cloud-based services to handle music playback across the various hardware platforms. But all require some sort of downloading/uploading of content before it can be enjoyed. No real change in how the content is consumed, just delivered in a slightly different way, and all music is still technically needs to be "purchased."

That makes Spotify the true breakthrough music service, one that can cater to my musical whims at the click of a mouse. And it's free, just a few ads here and there and that's it. Full Tom Waits catalog on a gloomy Saturday? Blast Watch the Throne as you sweep and mop the apartment? Boom. And I kid you not as I was typing this sentence, Devon hit me up on the gChat with this video. Which made me check for the Judgment Night Soundtrack. And of course they have it. JUST ANOTHER VICTIM!

And for me, that's exactly what I want. I can buy the cd when I want to beat the shit out of my steering wheel, I'll grab a the mp3 of Amazon when it an artist I already dig, and I'll fill in all the edges and randomness with Spotify. Who doesn't want almost everything as an option?

Click here for Pearl Jam - Live at Benaroya Hall on Spotify.

New Music Tuesday: Apology Rap Edition

2011-11-14T21:48:00.001-08:00

Take Care - Drake An album cover so good it deserves a much better fate than being a thumbnail pic on iTunes or Spotify.

Camp - Childish Gambino Mourn the "benching" of your Greendale pretend best friends by blasting Donald Glover's hip-hop alter-ego.

Back to Me - Howie D A solo album from one of the Backstreet Boys. Good for him, still getting paid somehow.

Get Along - Tegan and Sara I think Dev likes these ladies. Never listened to them, but I liked when they talked shit about Odd Future.

The Papercut Chronicles II - Gym Class Heroes If you like this kind of thing I'd love to hear how you ended up on this website. No judgements, leave your story in the comments.

Coco Beware - Caveman Now that's an album title! And the music isn't bad either. Take a listen:

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: Picking Out a Thermos Edition

2011-11-13T22:35:00.001-08:00

10. "Soul Suckin Jerk" - Beck What a hot jam. Beck's had a pretty great career when you think about it.

9. "Runaway" - Kanye West I listened to Watch The Throne for the first time today. I like this Kanye West character.

8. "I Can't Hear You" - Fu Manchu Can you hear me know? Good!

7. "Senioritis" - Fu Manchu Double shot of the Fu!

6. "Where Eagles Dare" - Misfits Everything about this song has already been said.

5. "St. Vitus Dance" - Black Sabbath Hey another reunion complete with a new album! Let's hope isn't not just 10 re-workings of "Electric Funeral."

4. "Undone (Sweater Song)" - Weezer Such a massive guitar tone on this record. Ric Ocasek everybody!

3. "Choke Sermon" - Lamb of God Had to turn down my computer speakers when this one came on. Modern metal production blows.

2. "Go With the Flow" - Queens of the Stone Age The perfect song. At least that's what I believe in my head.

1. "Wasted Again" Turbonegro Keith Morris has the best hair in rock 'n roll.

Click here for this playlist on Spotify.

Girls Girls Girls

2011-11-12T20:13:00.001-08:00

The are a number of things I get obsessed over for brief periods of time, sometimes I have the will power of a five-year-old at Honeydukes. At the moment my lust-o-meter is on full guitar player alert, with my every waking moment I've got all these different sounds bouncing around my head. Besides the fuzz pedal I just bought, I'm dying to get an new delay and maybe even a tremolo if one flutters and churns me right way. I'm spending hours at ~~work~~ home watching YouTube clips of gear videos when I should be doing something more productive, like maybe playing guitar.

When my brain is on a tone hunt I need some good tunes to help satisfy and propel that hunger. And right now there's no better band for me to get that fix than indie rock darlings Girls, whose endless supply of stompbox and Rickenbacker tones are a delight. It's rare for a band to effortlessly weave in different sounds and flavors without sounding labored, but somehow Girls' gameplan of "do whatever the hell sounds good at the time" works like a charm. From California pop, shoegaze dirge, and reverb-soaked surf, it's all there. And I'm digging it big time.

Girls "Die"

A great example of the kind of diversity Girls can churn out is "Die," which comes galloping in on a big fuzz tone and thick riffs, a la Duty favs Witch. I was not expecting this from a Pitchfork indie buzz-band. And it's convincing, not some Williamsburg fucks that bought a Big Muff and suddenly think they own big-boy rock pants that actually fit.

If that intro doesn't grab you, when the lead guitar comes sliding over like some grease-ball looking for your phone number, lickin' his fingers and adjusting them eyebrows, that should do the trick. And if somehow you're still not down, the song eases into a Zeppelin-y Jethro Tull-ish pointy green boot outro that grooves its way into the mist. Now we are talking. Time to go buy a Silverface Deluxe Reverb to run that Hoof through and get cracking!

The band recently filmed a few songs for Pitchfork.tv in an abandoned Brooklyn church, complete with natural reverb and a parade of backup singers. WARNING: Contains serious Jazzmaster porn, some awful shirt patterns, and a middle-aged bass player sportin' silver sideburns. Check it out below:

The Duty's Live Evil: Mastodon // Dillinger Escape Plan // Red Fang!

2011-11-11T07:25:00.000-08:00

Mastodon // Dillinger Escape Plan // Red Fang
Shobox SODO, Seattle
November 6th, 2011

There was no way this show was going to be great. Good, ok, or shit-sandwich maybe, but I wasn't going in expecting a transcendent musical journey. That kind of thing doesn't happen often, but I got it last time I saw Mastodon in Seattle. They played my favorite venue Neumos, a legendary club that holds 500 standing with a sweet bar balcony and happens to be four blocks from my First Hill apartment. Mastodon crushed the entirety of Crack The Skye that night, and experiencing that kind of intensity in such an intimate setting is just about what every music fan wishes. This show was not a Neumos, and I was already wary of the move to a venue I don't enjoy.

Showbox SODO is not the shittiest place for a rock show. But it might be the must uninspiring, a giant boring cement box, a bar with awful sight-lines, and zero vibe. All the rock shows not big enough for Key Arena but too big for a scuzzy club with "personality" all over the walls. I'd rather go just about anywhere else in Seattle to see a show.

But as much as I complain, a move to the larger Showbox SODO is expected as Mastodon's popularity grows. That's how the rock and roll is supposed to work. I am not naive, I couldn't expect to see them in a small club for the rest of their career. And with The Hunter being accessible and just plain rocking, new casual fans filling a bigger venue was to inevitable. So as a responsible music journalist I go anyway, in search a good time and probably a street dog I'll regret in the morning. On to the show!

As much as Mastodon gets translated poorly in a large venue, I felt worse for the Pacific Northwest brothers in stoner-rock Red Fang. Their brand of sweaty beer-metal works so much better the barely-a-stage Comet, where you can get a face full of beaddruff and spittle straight from the source. At SODO they got scattered headbangs and polite but tempered approval from the crowd. The place was just too cavernous for their energy to translate. Hope anyone that was turned on to them gets to see them in a better setting.

Dillinger Escape Plan is another casualty of a venue to large for their style of show, but also I think we're past the expiration date on their hardcore metal act. Loved these guys for years, but the spin kicks and and guitar olympics are getting childish and tired. Those guitar players need to RELAX. There has to be some give and take of energy with the crowd, fighting off invisible robot assassins does not make you seem intense. It makes you look desperate. As soon as the set ended I turned to Dev to give my post-mordem on whatever was left of my enthusiasm for these guys when he showed me this tweet from @seattlerockguy. Yep. So there was no need to talk about it.

So Mastodon had the deck stacked against them, not only by my pessimistic outlook based on venue, but also due to unforeseen internet incident that happened earlier in the week. When I was writing my review on The Hunter, I went to their official site looking for an image to use and I saw this posted as a news story. Who wants to know the setlist before a show? I was bummed. They were going to open the show with my favorite song of the new record, "Dry Bone Valley," and it would have been a fantastic surprise. That initial reaction and surge of excitement when the band rips into a song you love might be the best part of a concert. It would have been nice to get that experience.

Some songs did fit the venue well, and surprisingly it was two from Blood Mountain that worked the best. "Colony of Birchmen" and "Sleeping Giant" sounded great, both tunes that have slower enveloping rhythms that were nice and chunky, and the crowd loved them. And a couple of new faster songs like "Spectrelight" and "Blasteroid" were sprinkled in nicely and sat well with the rest of the catalog. But after being right there in front before, close enough to twiddle some knobs on Brent's pedalboard, I am forever ruined for the Mastodon live experience. Even the bursting energy of "Blood and Thunder" and "March of the Fire Ants" sounded a dull and lifeless in this cavernous warehouse setting. Might as well have the show at Home Depot. Big sweaty metal needs that closeness of a dirty rock club, SODO is a cock-rock 4x4 riff strutting type of place. No fault of the band, got to sell tickets and make some cash. This is the business.

A few years ago a friend of mine told me he'll never see a show again at El Corazon because he hated the way it sounded there. Show after show I'd ask him if he was going and he always refused no matter what bands were playing because of how much he despised the acoustics. I always though he was nuts. I get it now. You've got to have some standards. Time to re-evaluate the shows I'll be attending until those press passes start pouring into Duty HQ and I don't have to shell out the scratch for venues that don't work for me. Street dogs on me.

Mastodon Setlist:

Dry Bone Valley / Black Tongue / Crystal Skull
I Am Ahab / Capillarian Crest / Colony of Birchmen
Megalodon / Blasteroid / Sleeping Giant
Ghost Of Karelia / All the Heavy Lifting / Curl of the Burl
Bedazzled Fingernails / Spectrelight / Circle of Cysquatch
Aqua Dementia / Crack the Skye / Where Strides the Behemoth
Iron Tusk / March of the Fire Ants / Blood and Thunder

Click here for a Spotify playlist of this set. (thanks to drlargepants)

Have a Drink on Me

2011-11-10T23:10:00.000-08:00

If you enjoy adult beverages and or the internet there's no way in hell you haven't seen this posted somewhere else already. But we do our Duty around here to bring you the good stuff, and Drinkify.org is the good stuff. Maybe even great stuff. So here it is again.

It is as simple as it gets. Type in an artist and you get a drink recommendation to make that music go down easy. At first I thought it was just cute, some smart computer people having fun with the ones and zeros after too many late nights at the bar. But then I typed in Judas Priest and I was told to pour myself a shot of Maker's Mark, my whiskey of choice.

My mind was blown. The algorithm has been perfected, the future has arrived, and our new robot alcohol-recommender overlords are self-aware.

I'll drink to that.

New Music Tuesday - Sweat for Echo Edition

2011-11-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Time Machine 2011 - Live in Cleveland - Rush - Live CD/DVD from Canada's loudest band. As much as I loves me some Alex Lifeson guitar tone, Rush's greatest accomplishment is making every fan feel like he has three best friends.

Crazy Clown Time - David Lynch - Hey, you guys think I should watch Twin Peaks? Has it aged better than Wild Palms?

Transmission Zero - Ghoul - Oh shit, these guys are opening for GWAR tonight. They're probably on stage right now!

Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds - Noel Gallagher - Even if Oasis isn't your thing, once you read Chuck Klosterman's article on Noel you'll have half a mind to buy this record ASAP.

Weightless - Animals As Leaders - Note-heavy math-metal from the nation's capital. Matt and I saw these guys open for Dillinger Escape Plan last year and even if I can't remember their set, it still somehow makes me happy to see them make a new record and earn praise from Metalsucks.

True Traitor True Whore - Leviathan - One-man black-metal perfect for makin' you feel evil and uncompassionate. This dude Wrest is either scary as fuck or nerdy as hell.

Til the Morning - Keith Sweat - Duuuude, I bet this album is awesome. I don't know much about this Mr. K. Sweat, but I've had this unopened bottle of wine on top of the fridge for six months and it's forty degrees outside. "Make You Say Ooh?" Let's DO IT.

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: I Use Some Ellipses Edition

2011-11-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Music" - Cat Stevens I'm down with Cat. He's truly, truly, truly outrageous.

9. "Krosstika" - GWAR Live From Mt Fuji: worth it for stage raps alone.

8. "Preview" - Built to Spill My worn-out bit on Built to Spill is how Keep It Like a Secret has a million guitar overdubs and still as much energy as a million guys playing together at the same time.

7. "Could This Be Magic?" - Van Halen Shuffle reads The Duty!

6. "King's Vengeance" - Thin Lizzy Brian Downey has my all-time absolute favorite drum tone. That said, I still say Brian Downing every...single...time.

5. "MTV Cribs" - Bill Burr Last year my mom and I watched Whitney Cummings' Money Shot and Bill Burr's Let It Go. I was nervous to laugh at the sex jokes.

4. "Prince Charming" - Metallica The joke used to be that when Matt and I started a band it would sound like Ass Cobra meets Load-era Metallica.

3. "Carnal Forge" - Carcass Oh man, I forgot I wrote a Duty about Carcass. 2008...so long ago.

2. "Back Against the Wall" - Circle Jerks It's funny how tiny this records sounds when it follows something with such burly production values.

1. "Atop the Pyramid That Is You" - The Fucking Champs Our favorite Shuffle band closes the night's Cool Down with a synth number. Always great.

Could This Be Magic?

2011-11-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

I was doing some research for an upcoming Eddie Van Halen post and I came across this awesome interview the immortal David Lee Roth did with Good Morning America in 1985, conducted by a young and fetching Kathy Lee Gifford! DLR is in peak form here, somehow coming across brash and confident, while at the same time humble and hungry. Not to mention he practically gets Kathy to purr on camera. The magic of Diamond Dave. He always knows how to work the audience. We hope those new Van Halen album rumors are true just for the DLR press tour.

One Month In: Mastodon's The Hunter

2011-11-03T08:41:00.000-07:00

Instead of normal album reviews, The Heavy Duty will take its time and live with the music for a bit, letting it breath and come to terms with what it all means. We are calling this feature "One Month In."

Old is the dirtiest word in music. It reeks of irrelevance and a lack of self-awareness. Getting older is (usually) bad news for bands and fans. Heavy Metal is supposed to be flowing blonde locks, fast cars, and supersized bulges, not skullets, Volvos, and pressed pleated pants.

Well I feel like I've been driving a mom-mobile around town and my bulge has never been that impressive. My dreams of being a metal god died years ago when I realized I didn't have the work ethic to be that awesome 24/7. Being a hard dude is hard-to-do. The clothes,the tattoos, the questionable womens. I'm not saying you can't mix a tasty cocktail of metal and responsibility, but I get hungover easily and I want to get up early and read The New Yorker. Musical natural selection has done it's thing. It doesn't happen to everyone, but it happened to me. I've mellowed and I've embraced the change. All I want to listen to now is either sexy, sad, or funny, and preferably all three. I'm at peace with this direction.

But through all the laughs, tears, and boners of my ever-changing music rotation the one heavy band that never left the playlist is Mastodon. All the others have slowly faded away, not with a bang (your head) but with a whimper. Now that they're five albums into all this, Atlanta's loudest band could be bored and old and it would be understandable. So what do they do for an encore after Crack the Skye, a serious and magical concept record that was an instant classic? How could they keep old-man Matthew hooked? Let's find out from the band themselves from an interview with Premier Guitar:

"We wanted to do a party record that was fun to make—and hopefully fun for fans to crank up and jam with some friends." - Bill Kelliher

Reverse course! And a lightened-up and boogie-shoed Mastodon is a home run for me. The Hunter nails my need for some beef back on the playlist without taking anything too seriously. It feels just right. Dial back the intensity, relax those gravel-gargling pipes and you'll still come out strong in the end. You can't be angry forever, especially once those Warner Brothers checks start rolling in and you're not getting your drunk-ass handed to you by a nu-metal bassist on the Las Vegas strip every other weekend.

Shorter songs, tighter arrangements and Zest-fully clean vocals are the most obvious differences from their old stuff. But a subtle change might be the biggest: the absence of those "hammer-to-the-face" moments that punctuated so many previous classics. Elephants marching riffs that made you shit blood. Songs like "Spectrelight" and "Black Tongue" are still heavy, but each of these tracks would be the "lightest" on old releases.

So I get it. If you that's why you dug Mastodon, this is a disappointing development. No bludgeoning to be found, no hairy man-beasts bellowing about fire ants or white whales or loose wolves. Sorry to everyone that wanted Remission: The New Batch or Leviathan 2: The Search for More Money. But for the rest of us, how great is this album!

Such a rich palate of hard rock and metal staples mixed with prog-ness filtered through the well-oiled Mastodon machine. All kinds of awesome moments that make me smile every time. "Curl of the Burl's" thick and tasty riffage. The big sexy cock-rock wah-pedal solo on "Dry Bone Valley." The LSD'd Pink Floydian intro madness of "The Creature Lives." Troy's hypnotic bass-lines throughout the verses of "Bedazzled Fingernails." Stop me before I name everything on the album.

With all that diversity in song structure, tone and feel, it makes repeat listening a breeze. Which might be the best thing about the whole endeavor. Previous discs were so epic and sweaty one listen a week was plenty, but with The Hunter I've found myself playing it back to back. It's the first album in a long time that I'm actively trying to wear out, if I could wear out an mp3 in the cloud, of course.

I feel a little guilty how much I love The Hunter. Not my favorite Mastodon album (still Leviathan) but it's the best possible record stylistically for 2011 Matthew. Sometimes albums come along just as you need them, and it just works. No more no less. I'm older but thank god I'm not getting bored. And neither is Mastodon. Now does anyone want to come over and crank the shit out of this?

Drunk Driving on a Wednesday

2011-11-02T06:48:00.000-07:00

I've had Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire's "Huzzah" in heavy rotation ever since I saw Pitchfork give his Lost in Translation mixtape a 7.9 late last month. I like to listen to it in my cubicle and surreptitiously judge everyone who walks by to use the copier.

Here's a few things I'm not real sure I like about "Huzzah":

So many "niggas"
So many "bitches"
The one or two "fags with their ball-sacks tucked in"
Not only does that lady have a "pussy so good my whole squad should enjoy it," she also has to spend the whole video dancing on eXquire's mattress, making him chicken dinners, and having generic vodka poured over her bare ass.

But here's a few things I'm pretty sure I do like about "Huzzah":

Super-catchy DWI hook
Montreal Expos hat
Lifted Necro beat
Mr. Muthafuckin's tongue-tied stammer is followed up with Paul Reubens-style "I fucked up on purpose"

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, when you add it up, this song is awesome! No downside!

Download Lost in Translation for free by clicking on that link just a few words to your left.

The Month in Amazon's $5 Downloads: November

2011-11-01T21:29:00.000-07:00

Each month The Heavy Duty takes a look at Amazon's 100 Albums for $5 super deal and see's what's worth your Lincoln.

Thickfreakness - The Black Keys Get the low down if ya don't know before their new album drops December 6th.

The Best That I Could Do: 1978-1988 - John Cougar Mellencamp Is this greatest hits title a Humblebrag? I think it is.

Highway 61 Revisited - Bob Dylan Probably should have purchased this before five seconds ago, but you can't rush some things. They happen when they want.

Wild Flag - Wild Flag I've heard of the bands these ladies used to be in and they've got excellent taste in guitars. Good enough for me!

Innervisions - Stevie Wonder Don't take my word for it, read up what Spike Lee had to say on the Twitter!

Lovers Rock - Sade It's cold out and time to snuggle up and get sexy indoors. No better soundtrack choice.

Greatest Hits: Grand Funk Railroad - Grand Funk Railroad My dad went to see them at the Mid-State Fair a couple of years back. ~~Paid $35.~~ They sold so few tickets they had to open up the grandstand to any asshole who was there to check out prize pigs and stuff their face with corn dogs. I love that story.

Temple of the Dog - Temple of the Dog I've you are not tired of all the early '90's grunge nostalgia floating around, this one should put you over.

Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Various Artists Could be The Heavy Duty's coveted album of the year. You don't want to be left out.

The Bends - Radiohead I forget about this album sometimes. It's awesome! Best buttery tremolo sound ever on "Planet Telex." Check it out:

Duty's Live Evil: Ryan Adams!

2011-11-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Ryan Adams
Benayora Hall, Seattle
Friday, October 21st, 2011

This is it, this is really happening

I've never had a conversation about Ryan Adams with anyone else (this is not entirely true, but I'll write about that another day). This strikes me as odd because he's not exactly an obscure artist. I've joked with people that sometimes it feels like he only exists in my own head, that Rock & Roll, Cold Roses, and Cardinology are signs of some sort of subtle schizophrenia. This must be an indie rock fan's dream, to have an artist all to himself, to have all his love and passion existing in a vacuum, without outside critics or complaining fans tainting the experiences. Just the music and me.

This is how I felt about Ryan Adams. So I had some initial fears about finally seeing him live in concert after being a solitary fan for the better part of ten years. Would my emotional attachments to these songs, those late-night headphone sessions that got me through all my lonely nights when I first moved to Seattle, be ruined? I feared screaming girls drowning out the show, singing along and chitter-chatting all through my personal experience. Goddamn, didn't they know how much this meant to me? How dare they!

Turns out Benayora Hall was the perfect venue to experience Adams' music and it also turns out that all my fears were as unwarranted as they were childish. This was a solo acoustic show in a hall that normally houses the Seattle Symphony; reverence for the event and the moment filtered throughout the crowd. No one sang along, there was minimal shouting between songs, and the mood was jovial and understated. Any doubts I had about this show were washed away instantly as Adams eased into the first song and I could hear the scratches and slides of his fingers along the strings. Even though I was in the very back row, I might as well have been sitting on the stage.

On stage was a single rug and chair, a piano to stage right and an extra microphone stand to stage left. No band, no pyrotechnics, just acoustic guitar and Ryan's voice, which has always been the main attraction anyway. And what an amazing sound in that place, such natural reverb, echo, and presence. The soft slow songs, barely whispered and heartbreaking, were clear and full, contrasted with moments of rapid-fire guitar strumming tattooed with passionate whelps.

The show went on for two and a half hours. It was songs about love and heartbreak and sadness, and of course rain. Lots of rain. Standard tropes for a singer-songwriter, but, goddamn, isn't that all we really care about? I wish I could sing like that, and write songs that cut and heal. Whenever I need that bluntness, that ache, this is where I go. I love the earnestness. Nothing is over-thought, just great melodies that linger and words that dance. Music is magic, it is religion, voodoo that makes no goddamn sense sometimes. And I got 26 songs that make me feel varying degrees of squishy and wistful and full of hope.

Must be strange to someone who doesn't care for Ryan Adams or thinks he sucks to get such to read of such adoration, like he's Bob Dylan or something. All I can say is it feels good to lose myself, to let art reverberate through. I'm convinced we all have love for an artist that defies explanation, and for me it's Ryan. Something that envelops your life so much you don't know where it begins or ends. I'm still a little shocked by the whole thing, that something this important to me could end up this fully realized. He was funny, sharp, and grateful. We loved him and he knew it.

And he gave it all right back.

There was only one moment where I lost it a bit, tears trying to reach down and contradict my manly beard. It was during "New York, New York," solo on piano. Not even one of my favorites, but as he sang "I still love you New York," all I could think about was the video he shot for the song four days before 9/11. Ten long years ago, a third of my life. It's hard not to reminisce about where I've been, where I was that day, where I am going. It was a bit overwhelming. An unexpected and lovely piano version that was perfect. Everything was in it's right place. Sometimes you need those moments where every inch of your body knows the right choices have been made, that your life is on the right path.

There was a young girl sitting next to me, an avatar for all my fears about this show, about my love of Ryan Adams' music and how isolated it has been. When she sat down I was ready for the worst. Boy was I wrong. She was adorable. Every time a new song started, even after just a few unrecognizable strums, she whispered under her breath, "excellent choice." I could feel her breath stop at every chorus, and a big release as he rolled back through the verses. Maybe I didn't notice and I was doing the same thing. It's still all a little foggy, to tell the truth.

I kept this music to myself, not as a secret cheap whiskey flask of shame but more fine bourbon I only drank alone, one I thought no one else liked the taste. What a wonderful way to unearth this other side of the Ryan Adams experience, and that is a wonderful thing. Funny how I even questioned it. I'm now ready to share. And since you've made it this far, I think it's time to pour you a shot.

Setlist:

Oh My Sweet Carolina / Ashes & Fire / If I Am A Stranger
Dirty Rain / Sweet Lil Gal / Lucky Now
Crossed Out Name / Invisible Riverside / Everybody Knows
Firecracker / New York, New York / Let It Ride
Two / Carolina Rain / Please Do Not Let Me Go
Jacksonville Skyline / Winding Wheel / The End

Encore:

Avenues / English Girls Approximately / Why Do They Leave?
Chains of Love / Withering Heights / Strawberry Wine (Black Metal version)
16 Days / Come Pick Me Up

Click here for a Spotify playlist of this set.

Special thanks to @raydipietro for the amazing picture I stole of his Twitter feed.

Happy Halloween From The Duty

2011-10-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

At this point in my life (probably until I have kids) my favorite part of Halloween is watching this amazing YouTube clip of Tim Curry's ham 'n cheese classic from the forgotten children's film The Worst Witch. We've been posting this clip on the Duty for years and for some reason I've seen it all over the internets this Halloween. Not sure how it took so long, but remember The Duty was on it first...

I wouldn't change places
With anyone tonight
We’ll carve pumpkin faces
And watch the witches' flight
Every human heart will shudder
Every soul will shake with fear
Tonight, the creepiest
Tonight, the scariest
Tonight, the most wonderful night
Uh-oh, night

Anything can happen on Halloween
Your dog could turn into a cat
There may be a toad in your bass guitar
Or your sister could turn into a bat

Christmas time brings the snow
Summer time brings the sun
But on Halloween your blood begins to run
Somethin' spooky’s going down now

Anything can happen on Halloween
It’s better than a video
Gremlins going to mess up every cassette
From London to Idaho

April First can be fun
New Year’s Eve is a bore
But on Halloween your flesh begins to crawl
Oh, I’m losing control

Anything can happen on Halloween
Your toenails grow wrong and your hair turns green
Your teacher could become a sardine
Your dentist could turn into a queen

Has anybody seen my tambourine
I may start playing 'Begin The Beguine'
The craziest night you’ve ever seen
This hairy, scary, creepy, crawling Haaaaaaaallooooooweeeeeeeeen.

The Month in Bedroom Covers

2011-10-31T06:52:00.000-07:00

(Bedroom Covers is a Tumblr page where I collect videos of people playing cover songs on their webcams. Once a month I'll post a few of my favorites here on The Heavy Duty.)

Sunn O)))
YouTube user Mumblefood

I've seen Sunn O))) a few times and they make me want to poop and go to sleep. That said, I think this video is awesome. Super-duper inside for everyone who likes and pretends to like doooooom/droooooone "metal." Dig this guy's hood and his Greg Anderson guitar moves. Looooove it. If this guy wants to write a column for The Duty, he has an open invitation. Please re-Tumblr.

The Killers - "Mr. Brightside"
YouTube user loveuloveb

I actually like this The Killers song, but mostly I just think this girl's super cute. She does a bunch of neat The Smiths/Morrissey covers and has she has the wherewithal to link her Twitter/Myspace/Tumblr pages to her YouTube account. Someday we'll hook up a super-sweet Heavy Duty interview with her, but in the meantime please refresh and reload her "This Charming Man" vid.

Til Tuesday - "Voices Carry"
YouTube user olliebyrd

I overheard this song in a sandwich shop and it had me firing up the YouTube as soon as I returned home. It bums me out a little that olliebyrd's probably listening to the Aimee Mann original through those headphones, but I love his grizzled fucking voice and his goddamn sincerity. A lot of times when a man covers an '80s pop song it offends me as some sort of disingenuous pussy ploy, but this guy's wearing sunglasses so I know he ain't no joke. I'm ready to hear more.

GWAR - "Fuckin' An Animal"
YouTube user emeraldisle13

He's drunk and he plays GWAR. What more do you want?

(Follow Bedroom Covers on Tumblr and Twitter. Submissions are always welcome.)

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle - Not-So-Special Trip Down Memory Lane Edition

2011-10-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Commando" - Arnocorps Greatest Band of All Time. If the Duty was a tenth as good, my life would be complete.

9. "A Valedictorian" - Stephen C. Smith Steve was one of my only friends in college. Now he runs marathons and writes heartbreaking songs about calculators. We email about once a year. The guy's an inspiration. Man, Arnocorps and then this? I feel like Shuffle's giving me a serious Cus D'amato pep-talk here.

8. "I Got Erection" - Turbonegro During my first autumn in Seattle I'd walk the forty minutes to work and listen to Ass Cobra. I've tapered off on these guys a whole lot since then, but, heavens, how great are these records? So sleazy, so scuzzy, so fun. And speaking of "great," check out my post on "Midnight NAMBLA"!

7. "Raising Hell" - Run DMC I used to listen to this song with my buddies in the Travis Larson Band. Late one night I saw DMC on Tom Green's MTV show and the next day when I told Trav about it he was genuinely hurt that I hadn't called him immediately.

6. "I Work in a Health Spa" - The Go-Betweens Some days I'd walk to work and listen to The Go-Betweens instead.

5. "Head Full of Steam" - The Go-Betweens A twofer! Shuffle must know how I like gettin' misty when I hear me some Go-Bees. These guys wrote a ton of great songs, and this is one of their best. I'm gonna have to dial in a Go-Betweens shuffle once this Cool-Down's finished.

4. "Oh Sister" - Adrian Borland A few years ago I was so into The Sound that I spent hours downloading demos and radio sessions from Russian blogspot pages.

3. "Roots Bloody Roots" - Sepultura Max has the best stage-raps in the business, and one time I saw a Sepultura photo spread where he had a bunch of pimples.

2. "Islamic Bomb" - Jello Biafra and the Melvins The Melvins are my favorite band I don't give a shit about.

1. "Deep Wound" - Deep Wound I used to work at this record store down in California and my favorite story from that time was when this kid came in and bought Dinosaur Jr's You're Living All Over Me. When he walked up to the register I told him how much I liked that record and how I hoped he'd really dig it. It's funny 'cause once we started talking he got all nervous like I was like an older cool record store guy and it made me realize that, yeah, I was an older cool record store guy, at least in the eyes of a gawky fourteen year-old. We shot the shit for a few minutes about J Mascis and then a few days later he came back into the store and left me a CD-R of some Deep Wound tracks he downloaded from Limewire. Awwww. Cute, right? It reminded me when I was his age and I blushed when I talked to the record store clerks about Silkworm.

We've Got Another Round Comin'

2011-10-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

And speaking of Jimmy Fallon, here's some video of Judas Priest playing "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" on Late Night a few weeks back.

I've watched this vid a whole bunch of times and it always puts me in a great mood. I've realized the reason I dig it so much, and the reason I've dug Judas Priest over the years, is because every time I see Rob Halford grip the mic stand like his life depends on it, or I see him bang his head and stomp his Frankenstein boots, or the moment I hear him change up the timing on a song just ever so slightly like how he does when he sings "'cause it's a case of do or die" right here, the only thing I want to do is swill a couple beers, sign up for karaoke, and pretend like I'm not reading the teleprompter while I point at everybody in the bar.

And that's pretty much how you know a band's awesome. They make you want to do a bunch of goofy shit and order maybe just one more pitcher.

Judas Priest is playing Seattle tonight, as part of their maybe-sorta-kinda-retiring Epitaph tour. Matt and I will unfortunately not be in attendance, but we'll be sure to pour one out for KK and fire up some "Hell Patrol" and "Freewheel Burning" in tribute.

GWAR Spare Fallon

2011-10-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that Dev and I are huge GWAR fans, so it's always exciting and a bit strange when Orderus and crew show up in the mainstream public consciousness, even just for one evening. Antarctica's loudest band spewed "Hail, Genocide" on Jimmy Fallon last night, probably freaking out lots of folks who left their tv's on and woke up to giant foam rubber heavy metal space monsters screaming at them. What they didn't see, however, was a full blown GWAR spectacle, which was toned down from the normal murderous blood and personal fluid splatter-fest for network tv consumption. Oh well, probably for the best. NBC viewers already had to endure Whitney that evening, maybe adding on the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu would be a bit too much to take.

This was the second straight year the band has performed around Halloween on Fallon, who quickly has gained the rep as the king of late night music with great bits, great guests, and the best house band going. Let's hope the Scumdogs get an invite to perform for us human filth every single year.

Rack 'Em, Shellac 'Em

2011-10-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Hey, so I'm going to see Shellac tonight. Nine o'clock at the Vera Project here at the Seattle Center. I think it'll be great. The last time they were in town there was a pinball exhibition across the hall and I saw Todd Trainer smoke a cigarette on the sidewalk. I remember that when I first got my iPod I'd listen to Shellac's "Billiard Player Song" over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. It gave me goosebumps when the instruments drop out and the song is Steve going, "a lot of people say she's crazy, but I know, I know a lotta people and I, I think, I think SHE'S ALRIGHT!" And, at the end of the song, when he's all, "He LIED to her, HE LIED TO HER with a PERFECTLY STRAIGHT FACE....she believed him"? So good.

I bought the entire Shellac catalogue because of this song.

I have no idea what it's about.

Definitive List 'O Top Ten: What The Fuck is a Mylo Xyloto?

2011-10-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

This week's biggest new album is the fifth LP from Zach Braff's favorite band and international superstars Coldplay. And for reasons unknown (maybe trying to out-weird Radiohead?) they have named their album Mylo Xyloto, which I have no idea how to pronounce or what in Tebow's name it means. But ignorance never got in The Heavy Duty's way before, so how about some wild speculation brought to you by Maker's Mark and boredom!

Definitive List 'o Top ~~Six~~ Ten Ways To Pronounce Mylo Xyloto:

10. Marge Schott

9. Marnie's Xylophones

8. Mike and Ike

7. Mitch McConnell

6. Miracle Max

5. My Friend Totoro

4. Milquetoast Lotto

3. Marty Funkhouser

2. Shigetoshi Hasegawa

1. Fuck You

Popa Chubby Was Taken

2011-10-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

Hey look it's our old friend Jason Newsted, former Metallica bassist and all around good guy playing with his new (old?) band Papa Wheelie. Seems like Jason is into playing some doom-metal riffs with a smile and a sweet bandana prop. I can get behind this, I've always liked Jason and he seems to be enjoying himself. This show took place at the Time Out Bar & Patio in beautiful downtown Concord, Ca. It's nice to know even after playing in front of 500,000 screaming Ruskies, Jason can still bring the intensity while competing with Nascar on a 42" flat screen.

The Lonely Boy and the Hoof

2011-10-26T07:28:00.000-07:00

I've wanted a fuzz pedal ever since I fired up the ZVEX Octane 3 at TrueTone Music in Santa Monica seven years ago. I didn't buy that day for two reasons: one, the pedal was $300 and I just couldn't justify paying out that much for a one trick pony effect, and two, I'd like to think young Matthew knew that his chops on geetar weren't good enough yet to eschew hours of clean right hand picking practice for thunderous ham-fisted glory. A fuzz tends to cover all ills with technique, and I wasn't ready.

Over the subsequent seven years, as my technique and sound have slowly improved, my taste in guitar tones has changed dramatically as well. I owe most of that to Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. His retro stomp blues fuzz was the freshest goddamn thing I'd heard in a long time, and it showed me that a great fuzz tone doesn't have to be all murderous and stoned. I know that Jimi and Eric Johnson have used fuzz pedals to tasteful effect in the past, but sometimes you need your own guy, no? Dan is my guy. His tone is soulful, sexy and thick, which is how I want to describe EVERYTHING in my life, not just how my guitar sounds.

So after seven long years it was finally fuzz time. I'm now the proud owner of an Earthquaker Devices "Hoof" fuzz pedal, and you guessed it, Dan uses this one on some of the new Keys' records. They're made in this hometown of Akron and it just about nails the fuzz tone I wanted. I stayed up late last night dialing it in, playing "Just a Little Heat" over and over again until it was all there. I'd like to apologize to neighbors and all the bums outside my building. Hope you enjoy it!

And after all that excitement over some germanium/silicon hybrid chips, I wake up to see that Dan and Patrick dropped the first single "Lonely Boy" from their new album El Camino. And of course the guitars sound great. Synergy!

We're Going to See GWAR...Again!

2011-10-26T01:01:00.000-07:00

So Matt and I are going to see GWAR in a couple weeks. I know that isn't shocking to any of you who've reading The Heavy Duty since we started it back in summer of '06, a time when I wrote a post that ranked all eleven GWAR shows I'd seen over the preceding seven years, but I have to tell you that this time around the very idea that we're going to see GWAR just feeeeels different to me. It feels BETTER than it has for years, since the time I was 19. This time it's exciting.

I think that what it all comes down to, and what this new brand of The Heavy Duty comes down to, is that Matt and I decided that we like what we like and we're gonna be best friends and like whatever we like harder than we've ever liked anything before. I fell in love with GWAR the minute I graduated high school. It was a time when I was tired of being dorky and smart. Tired of being scrawny. I had terrible hair and all I wanted to do was drink six-packs of Dr. Pepper and watch my friends puke in the backyard of a strange kid's house while his parents were out of town. GWAR encapsulated the entire identity I wanted for myself. I'd been reading Joe Bob Briggs' reviews of Chained Heat 2 and Frankenhooker since I was twelve, and I'd listened to Suicidal Tendencies since my ninth grade track meets. I already liked bloody, disgusting, and irreverent. I could play guitar. I was a seventeen year-old with a Hunter Thompson fixation and cravings for Taco Bell. GWAR hit the spot. To a tee.

For the next few years all I did was think about GWAR. I saw them as many times as I could (on consecutive days and in different states), I read and then re-read everything on their poorly-designed website, and I even had the gall to pitch a fit when I special ordered a copy of 1994's This Toilet Earth and it showed up with blacked-out cartoon penises and a notably absent "BDF" (the song's full title is "Baby Dick Fuck"). (I should note that by "gall" I mean that I picked up this CD just hours after my parents and I had put our dog, Chelsea, born November 9, 1984, to sleep. When we'd bought her from a friend of my mom's I was four years old and she'd chewed on my Bert and Ernie Sesame Street slippers. When her kidneys failed and we put her down, I wasn't just displacing my sadness and frustration that my childhood pet had died, I honestly think I was so invested in GWAR that the CD debacle had upset me more.)

By the time I turned, say, 25 or so GWAR didn't mean as much to me as they had when I was 21. I still talked a good game (check the Duty archives), but when I think about it now I realize that I'd really stopped listening to the band. I remember liking War Party an awful lot, but I also remember that I listened to Thin Lizzy's Bad Reputation waaaaay more than I did Beyond Hell and that I was finally cognizant that no one else I knew gave a damn about GWAR. No one wanted to come to the shows and no one else wanted to listen to me when I told them how I thought GWAR was the most underrated rock band in the history of rock bands. Not long after, I happened to lose nearly all interest in heavy metal, and I started feeling that brooding over Belle and Sebastian was a more important way to spend my time than listening to drunk guys in black t-shirts. GWAR came to town a few times during those couple years and I had zero interest in going. Been there, done that. I'd moved on.

But in recent weeks there's been as honest a Heavy Duty renaissance as anyone could have imagined. Matt and I were hanging out one night and as soon as we saw that GWAR was heading out on another Fall U.S. tour we said, "You know what? Fuck it, we should go. No wait, we neeeeed to go." Yeah, it was a decision initially fueled by nostalgia, but yesterday after I bought that pair of tickets for Tuesday, November 8, at the Showbox SoDo, all of that obligation bullshit flew right out the goddamn window. As I walked home I started thinking about how much I'd sincerely loved GWAR during those years of my life when I'd started to drink but still had to find someone's brother to buy us a twelve-pack. But more importantly I started thinking about how much GWAR's music and attitude had ABSOLUTELY changed my life. I'm pretty sure this will sound utterly preposterous to all of you out there, but GWAR changed everything about my way of thinking. They were a fundamental part of my coming into adulthood. I was an underachieving bum, living at my dad's house and going to community college, but I still knew that no matter how silly, sloppy, or puerile GWAR could get, it was still the sound of of guys who did everything themselves. They were guys who'd been making it happen since 1985, guys who criss-crossed the country for a decade and a half with duct-taped school-buses and revolting injection-molded costumes that had saggy tits and bad moustaches. And all the while, these cats made NO money and earned NO respect. They committed to a shtick that was just as hilarious as it was ingenious, and they wrote a litany of songs with dangerous heavy metal riffs and junkyard-dog shout-choruses. Even when they padded albums with oompa-opera songs like "The Insidious Soliloquy of Skulhedface" or horrible ska-comedy numbers like "The Performer" I couldn't deny that it was all steeped in personality, truth, and an honesty of spirit. It didn't matter that the CD booklet was rife with misspellings or that the band photos were out of focus because the only thing that mattered was that it all added up to a band that took a bunch of goofy chances for no other reason than because they wanted to. Sure, it looked dicey when decided to be a novelty comedy act and, sure, it looked desperate when they over-corrected into a humorless mass-murdering monster combo, but through it all I never felt that GWAR sold out or lost their commitment to hard work. They never stopped touring. They never stopped making records. And all the while no one, and, let's be honest, NO ONE, took them seriously. You can't not be impressed that they've stuck it out this long.

So I guess that what I want to say is that when a band truly means something to you for a chunk of time, like, say, a whole bunch of your formative years, then they immediately become family. And once they're family, they'll never leave your side. It cracks me up that GWAR has become this way for me. Other people may have a similar connection to Radiohead or Modest Mouse or, hell, Neurosis, but GWAR will always be that band for me. I hear Dave Brockie's shredded voice on Ragnarok and I know that no on can top him. Mike Derk's tone on America Must Be Destroyed? I'm stunned that any band could get a sound that's not only that dense and heavy, but one that's also so sodden with pathology and diseased blood plasma. When I hear "Decay of Grandeur" I legitimately can't stop smiling because all I'm so overjoyed that I can hear a band I love take such a major step forward with its songwriting.

So next week (errr, in two weeks) when Matt and I go down to a venue we can't stand and spend the evening amongst a crowd that drove in from Renton to see a band they've never listened to, I know that we're gonna look onstage and see those enormous fake penises and plastic-wrapped guitar cabinets and instantly feel like we're back with our other best friends. GWAR was THE soundtrack to our eighteenth year, and now...here we are. It's 2011. Matt and I are thirteen years older and we're still the best of friends. We're still spending all of our time ostensibly talking about heavy music and TV shows, but really all we're talking about is our hopes and insecurities. And then, there's GWAR, a cavalcade of gnarly old dudes from Virginia, still dressed up as dope-sick beasts from outer space and still touring the country year after year ripping the intestines out of rubber infants and tabloid celebrities.

It's a glorious thing.

It makes me happy.

I can't fucking wait.

*****************

Here's "None But the Brave," the final song from 1995's Ragnarok. We've never said it out loud, but the both of us here at The Heavy Duty agree that it is hands-down GWAR's finest moment. The older I get, the more amazed I am that GWAR could pull off a song so flawlessly sincere. Just listen to that sustained guitar bend on that main riff. Hear those evil and ominous Through Silver in Blood-style sheet-metal squeals. Dig the way that lead guitar fades in when Oderus sings "I've got a midget following me 'round everywhere I gooooo." I know this all sounds silly to you because you're not a GWAR fan and you don't own every album or watch every DVD, but this song is most organic thing GWAR's ever done. It's not a gimmick. It's not a put-on. It has fucking sooooul. It's life on the road and senseless manslaugher and motherfucking self-reliance. It's genius. It's heartbreaking.

But mostly?

It's:

"Sad enough to make me cry // Strong enough to make me die."

New Music Tuesday - Don't Sleep on Otis Edition

2011-10-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

Mylo Xyloto - Coldplay - Gwyneth has managed to GOOP her lameness to either equal or more than her husband's patented slumber-rock. Not an easy accomplishment.

Stronger - Kelly Clarkson - What's the deal with Kelly Clarkson? Somebody tell me. I don't feel like hitting the Wikipedia. Just leave a note in the comments.

A Very She & Him Christmas - She & Him - This all a bit much, no? How much Zooey can we all take? I say we all move on the Alison Brie.

Clancy's Tavern - Toby Keith - I would buy this if it was a concept record about noted character-actor Clancy Brown buying a bar and kicking ass.

Audio, Video Disco - Justice - More ass-shaking keyboard stylings. This time from France!

Bad As Me - Tom Waits - No matter how much Waits I listen to, when I hear his voice I'll always think of Frank Sobotka.

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: SHUFFLE9000 Edition

2011-10-23T18:32:00.000-07:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Killing in the Name" - Rage Against the Machine - My brother's old band ~~Swim~~ Dryfus used to do a pretty sweet version of this song. Awesome to think about 17 year old Matthew watching his 19 year old brother rip the shit out at a coffee shop.

9. "Fix It" - Ryan Adams and The Cardinals - Fantastic guitar tones on this one. The whole album really. Watch this.

8. "Spread Eagle Beagle" - The Melvins - Hard to come up with a worse shuffle song. But I must observe the shuffle rules and listen to the entire thing. Time to go make some dinner!

7. "Back to the Life" - Spoon - This song opens with a cackling Britt Daniel. Shuffle officially freaking me out. I'm very close to having a "close the pod bay doors" moment. It's becoming self-aware.

6. "Now I Wanna Be a Good Boy" - The Ramones - I've lost my Ramones boner. Just not doing it for me right now.

5. "I Like to Move in the Night" - Eagles of Death Metal - This track gets me up outta my chair and shaking my shit. I just make sure the blinds are closed first.

4. "Cherry Lane" - Ryan Adams and the Cardinals - The shuffle is telling me to finish my Ryan Adams show review. Shuffle needs to mind it's own business.

3. "Immigrant Song" Led Zeppelin - Two minutes of F# Fury.

2. "Stare Too Long" - Corrosion of Conformity - COC in full "Simple Man Mode." With a Warren Haynes cameo!

1. "Evil Walks" - AC/DC - And the shuffle talks. I'm getting of this computer. Time to go watch the World Series.

We Are All The Table

2011-10-22T16:06:00.000-07:00

Devon and I just finished listening to the entirety of Lulu, the Metallica / Lou Reed mashup that the internet is celebrating with unrelenting snark. Here at The Heavy Duty we have a more positive outlook on these sort of things. And me being the biggest Metallica apologist in the world, you know I'll give you a ~~biased~~ open mind on all things poetry-metal.

And what a grand time we had listing to LouTallicA. How much fun is this? An afternoon at Heavy Duty HQ cranking some weird shit. Lou Reed is a gnarly old dude going through the notebook, pouring out all kinds of trashy shit while Metallica space out behind him. Old men trying something different, something weird and uncompromising. It was as ridiculous as it sounds and I love it. The best stuff here is when the band let the Metallica trappings fall away and give Lou some spacey atmospheric jams to work over. Sure, some of it is just boring riffs with Lou prattling on about blood and dog dicks, but when it comes together and it sounds like a real five piece band it's pretty neat.

They have their money. Metallica can tour forever and can crank out the mid-tempo metal and Lou can do the art rock scene and no one would care. Other people can care about legacy and relevance. It's refreshing to hear guys who've made their mark give something this odd a try. What is the harm in that? It doesn't matter if it's good or bad. What matters is that they tried something new. I will take a new failure over an old retread every single time.

New Music Tuesday: Jane Says, But Who's Buying?

2011-10-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

The Great Escape Artist - Jane's Addiction - I've never liked Jane's Addiction. Honest question: Is there anyone out there who gets bummed out by these reunion records? Are Perry and Dave killing the last of their alternative rock cred here?

Best of 25 Years - Sting - This Sting character knows how to do it for a long, long time. We're talking non-stop pleasure from the Blonde Brit Bass-Master. How does he do it?

Beyond the Sun - Chris Isaak - I love this song. I sing along to it when I'm by myself. I know no one else can sing it. Isaak owns this. All cover version blow. Don't even try, my friend. Keep those pipes in the shower or stuck in traffic.

Dystopia - Iced Earth - We've seen so many different post-apocalyptic films recently, have they done one set in the middle of a new-ice age? Did I miss it? Let me snow in the comments!

Songs of the Ungrateful Living - Everlast - State of the Union got you down in the dumps? Don't worry, Everlast is here to give voice to the voiceless. Don't take my word for it, read these rave reviews.

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming - M83 Thanks to the Drive Soundtrack I'm totally down with sexy keyboards right now. Got to strike while the iron is hot, before I move on to sexy oboes.

Twist of Cain

2011-10-18T18:49:00.000-07:00

Matthew: research papers suck6:34 PM me: Arent you in class? Matthew: cancelled! me: Bummer. Time for podcasts! Matthew: So I'm being proactive and getting my homework done for Tue *Thurs6:35 PM me: Im watching south park on my laptop Matthew: How about that? I figured I had two free hours. Radiohead, no pants and GOP debate live tweets. Doing my paper on the Duwamish River. me: yeah! Twist of Cain6:36 PM Matthew: hahahhahahahahah Post that. Like one paragraph on Herman Cain and Danzig. He's got that 9-9-9 plan and everything! easy post!6:37 PM http://www.hermancain.com/999plan

Yep. Just another night at The Heavy Duty.

(image courtesy of @benjaminlande)

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle -- Make A Wish Edition

2011-10-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "I Love You" - Brian Jonestown Massacre Check it out, it's my birthday! I'm thirty-one years young. Can you believe it?

9. "Are You Ready?" - Rollins Band Matt and I are celebrating by going to Outback Steakhouse for a best friends late lunch. When we went to Outback for my birthday two years ago it was raining cats and dogs. There was some serious coming up over the curb action out there.

8. "Eye of the Lens" - Comsat Angels The whole Outback thing started because one time Matt was about to go to Las Vegas for work and he came back to Duty HQ all like, "Booth, we're going for steaks. My treat!"

7. "The Price of Peace" - GWAR We think that's a really fun story. We also like talking about Blooming Onions. So now we go to Outback on special occasions.

6. "I Didn't Know How To Love You" - Marc Maron We like that story because of how I was notorious about hemming and hawing about going out and doing anything until someone else agreed to pay for it. Then I'd be like, "Alright! Let's do this! We're gonna have a great time!"

5. "Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark)" - Immortal I'm pretty down for whatever nowadays, but that's still a classic Booth move. I play it up whenever I'm hanging with Matt and his dad.

4. "No One Says Old Man (to the Old Man)" - Mike Watt I think the last time we went to Outback I was the one who told the waitress it was my birthday.

3. "Shining One (Rex Luciferi)" - Angel Corpse That was really lame of me to do. I'm a little embarrassed I did that.

2. "Tuff Gnarl" - Sonic Youth But that birthday was pretty good, now that I think about it. I got to reconnect with some friends I hadn't seen in awhile and we all went to a bar. When we left the bartender got in my buddy's face because he didn't leave a big enough tip.

1. "The Despoiler of Human Life" - Skeletonwitch Later that night my friend's girlfriend kissed me. That was pretty funny. I think she likes that story more than Matt and I like going to Outback.

The Duty's Live Evil: Jonathan Richman!

2011-10-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Richman

The Tractor Tavern, Seattle
Sunday, September 25, 2011

I've seen Jonathan Richman a few times over the years, and every time I go I get a little sad because I'm always there alone. I'm always standing by myself while couples next to me chuckle at the way Jonathan, in his floral shirt and ballet shoes, stops a song so he can pick up a tambourine and dance his way across the stage, or at how he makes it seem that if you're going to rhyme "stultified" the obvious choice would of course be "formaldehyde."

I'm not sad because I'm feeling angry or bitter, but because Jonathan Richman fills me with such an unshakeable sense of of longing and romance that I can't help but get misty. It's something his music has always done to me, and if he didn't do that to me, then I wouldn't adore him or his music as much as I do.

Here's when I knew I liked Jonathan Richman. I was 15 years old and home alone. It was a spring evening, it was a Saturday, and I was lying on my bedroom floor diagramming sentences for Honors English. I guess that's probably enough of an explanation about why I like Jonathan Richman right there.

See, I'd bought a best-of compilation of the Modern Lovers, Jonathan's first band, about a year before. The Modern Lovers started out in Boston during the early 1970s where they penned teenage garage-rock songs about vulnerability and unrequited love. I'd found out about them when I heard a cover of their song "Pablo Picasso" on the Repo Man soundtrack. I was in junior high and the song made me laugh. Pablo Picasso, it went, "was never called an asshole," he was only five foot three, and he never failed to make the girls "turn the color of an ... avocado." I later heard a few other Modern Lovers songs like "Roadrunner," their most famous cut, a four minute two chord song about driving your dad's station wagon down deserted streets and listening to AM radio. On the strength of this I'd finally decided that it was time to buy their greatest-hits album. I felt great about it, but when I took it home, I found myself sitting there in shame. As it turns out, what I didn't know about Jonathan Richman was that after he wrote slighty dirty Velvet Underground-tinged songs about how you feel low when girls don't call you back, he spent the rest of the 1970s writing children's novelty songs about snowmen and ice cream trucks. Jonathan Richman and his Modern Lovers became a band that filled their albums with verses about Leprechauns and mosquitoes. They even had the nerve to proclaim that they would "go out to help your daddy when he goes out for maple syrup."

Ugh.

This CD sat on the shelf for a full year before I could bring myself to touch it again, but on this spring evening I had let down my guard. Maybe I just knew that no one would be around to ask me why I was listening to a Raffi album. So I decided to put it on.

And it was gooood.

I mean, I dunno what had happened, but somehow Jonathan Richman immediately meant something to me. Songs like "Abdul and Cleopatra" weren't like anything else I listened to (which was at that time Infectious Grooves and Dinosaur Jr.), and they were painfully earnest and just a little bit sad. Jonathan's voice was heartbreaking the way it would crack when he sang how Abdul yearned for Cleopatra. Just the fact that he was a grown man singing simplified versions of Romeo and Juliet, or that he didn't think twice about adding an extra syllable to a word like "at" just so he could make a rhyme made me smile like no one else ever had. Entire songs were bursting with doo-wop hand-claps, ooohs, and awwws. The honesty hooked me. All of the sudden love songs about the bells on an ice cream truck and verses about how no matter how much "your friend Jonathan likes to eat food a lot" affection was still the most important thing to him didn't sound corny, childish, or embarrassing. Instead, they made me smile. They were so sweet and so romantic, and I was a shy high school kid who'd never kissed a girl. I may have been doing grammar homework on a weekend of all things, but when I heard Jonathan's sincerity I felt like I had that same love inside me, that I was smart and sensitive too, and that it was okay to have whatever you feelings you had and to not be scared that you had a crush.

And this is precisely how I've felt with Jonathan Richman since then. No matter how much has happened since my sophomore year, I'm still just a kid sitting on the floor of my room longing for someone to love. Jonathan Richman is the only person that's ever filled me with the hope that things will be all right. I well up a little bit when I hear him improvise a verse about when he was fourteen and blushed when he tried to talk to that older girl, or when he describes carefree romance as a "blue jean jacket in the sun" because it reminds me that no matter how burdened and cynical I can feel this world is just a comedy of errors and that there's never a shortage of people in our lives who truly love us.

So what I guess I'm trying to say is that I like Jonathan Richman because his music was always there for me and has never failed to make me feel better . The times in my life when his songs were in the heaviest of heavy rotations were also the times in my life when I was feeling lonely or driving home to my parents' house late at night with the windows down. His music may be honest and weird, but it's always given me me just enough hope and perspective about the past, present, and future that I feel such a strong and personal connection to it. That night at the Tractor I started feeling a little bummed that I didn't invite someone and that I didn't walk away from the bar with two Mac and Jack's in my hand, but I snapped out of it when I realized that the last thing I should feel on this night is sadness because that's not what Jonathan represents. I decided right then and there to stop judging everyone in the audience and stop thinking that I was the only one who really got Jonathan. Instead, I spent the evening remembering everything I loved about the guy and about how special it was that here was a singer who's been filling venues across the world for forty years. And this show? It was cute, and it was clever, and it was funny and heartbreaking all at the same time. As I walked back to my car I realized that it was pretty great that I had grown up with such a unique soundtrack, and how that soundtrack was going to be a part of me up until my very last days. I realized that it didn't matter that I did something meaningful and important by myself because the part that mattered was that it was meaningful and important and not that I didn't have my arm around a date. And the best part? That's just how Jonathan would want me to feel.

Here was the night's setlist:

O Moon, Queen of Night on Earth
Let Her Go Into the Darkness
Her Mystery Not of High Heels and Eye Shadow
(a song I don't know, but my notes say it was about getting the audience to clap their hands)
I Have a Hard Time Saying Goodbye (another new song, this might be the title)
If You Want to Leave Our Party Just Go
No One Was Like Vermeer
(a new song, this one about running on the beach)
My Affected Accent
"Stultified" / "Formaldehyde"
Because Her Beauty Was Raw and Wild
When We Refuse to Suffer
This Romance Will Be Different for Me
(a song about "her olive skin," in Italian)

These Bodies That Came to Cavort
It's Alright (new song, about things being alright)
Not So Much to Be Loved As to Love

(Thanks to YouTube user adamrocha for uploading the above video.)

New Music Tuesday: Almost Wednesday Edition

2011-10-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

Here's The Heavy Duty's random roundup of Tuesday's new music releases:

Ashes & Fire - Ryan Adams   Might do a review or just wait and do a combo album/show piece after the Benaroya Hall show next week.

Biophilia - Bjork   Don't make me get out a dictionary, Swan Lady.

Invernal - Black Cobra   These guys are opening for Kyuss No Homme here in Seattle on November 22nd along with The Sword. Thick riffs and a smelly pit.

Calling All Corpses - Wednesday 13   Check out the Wiki on this cat. That is a shit-ton of records.

TKOL RMX 1234567 - Radiohead   How do you remix an album that already sounds like it's been remixed eight times?

New Blood - Peter Gabriel   Man, Lloyd Dobler is a loser. That Cameron Crowe was full of shit.

Evanescence - Evanescence Had no idea Amy Lee was still kicking around with this "band" thing.

The Black Keys Knock

2011-10-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

Although I couldn't be more excited to get another Black Keys record so soon after the excellence of last years Brothers LP, I wonder if this is the best time to drop a viral ad featuring Bob Odenkirk echoing his Saul Goodman character from Breaking Bad so soon after last night's stunning finale. Maybe my mental Venn diagram is way wrong and that most people who dig The Walter White Morality Hour aren't fans of Akron's loudest band, but personally I can't watch this video without thinking Heisenberg might pop up halfway through with a pipe bomb and blow up that innocent boogie van. Maybe it's just me, and all you Mr. Show fans are lapping up this video, but Breaking Bad's got me by the balls and it's all I can think about right now. Let's hope by the time El Camino drops on December 6th I'll finally have this image out of my head.

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle: Sweet Tooth Edition

2011-10-09T22:17:00.000-07:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "Radio Daze" - The Roots How strange is it that Jimmy Fallon has the best late night talk show?

9. "Milano Mosh" - Stormtroopers of Death I'm more of a Sausalito guy but I'll never turn down a Pepperidge Farm cookie.

8. "Greet the Sacred Cow" - Primus A band I am rarely in the mood for, which makes them a perfect band for the shuffle.

7. "2 X 4" - Metallica One good thing that could come out of the LouTallicA experiment is Load might seem like a reasonable musical direction in comparison.

6. "Sharpshooter" - Motorhead The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be.

5. "Heart of the Devil" - Danzig EEEEEEEEEEEVIIIIIL.

4. "Custard Pie" Led Zeppelin Mmmmmmn. More dessert. Time for some ice cream.

3. "Fisticuffs" - Primus See what happens when you say something nice about Primus? You get more Primus.

2. "Hot Streets" - Cheeseburger Oh man, Steve Jobs really knows what I like. Never a doubt.

1. "Heavy metal drummer" - Wilco My favorite is Scott Travis.

Definitive List o' Top Six - New Monday Night Football Theme Songs

2011-10-06T14:22:00.000-07:00

In case anyone was wondering, dropping Hitler comparisons in 2011 is still a bit of a taboo. Maybe next year! So a new theme for ESPN's Monday Night Football is needed, and other more popular (has actual readers) blogs have suggested other artists or personalities who could replace Hank Williams Jr. to kick of the show. And I say bollocks! The Heavy Duty thinks that logic is all wrong. This is a great opportunity right there for The National Football League to give a must needed modern facelift to its former signature show piece.

The National Football League is not about the star power of the individual, it is all about team and the glory of the collective. Pete Rozelle's socialist parity dream is a reality now and we are living up in it. So in lieu of a replacing the singular star power of the bearded redneck anachronism Hank II, it's all about right the right song choice. No more rowdy friends, no more shoehorning announcer names into a shit country song; it is time to update that creaky overture. Lots of different ways to go here, I tried to come up with six distinct takes on a direction ESPN could travel. I humbly submit to you a list 'o top six for your consideration:

List 'O Top Six New Monday Night Football Theme Songs:

6. "Unchained" - Van Halen Back When my family received our first cd player, my father and I would try to line up every NFL kick-off with "Unchained" because we were tired of "Start Me Up" being the default stadium choice. Father-son bonding, Diamond Dave, and one of the greatest riffs of all time. This is Field of Dreams-esque folks. Not a dry seat in the house.

5. "I Can't Wait" - Ol' Dirty Bastard What better way to build anticipation for a pigskin beat-down than ODB's classic hip-hop shout-out-fest. It's perfect! This is my only suggestion where the lyrics could be changed to reflect that night's matchup and the announcing crew. Also I wanted to link to this again.

4. "Pigeon Toe" - Fu Manchu I have no idea what this song is about, it just pumps me up like musical craaaaaack. The heaviest song by the heaviest band that is not "heavy metal."

3. "TV Party" - Black Flag An obvious choice, but something tells me that a lot of people would not get the ironic tone of this at all. And that is a wonderful thing. HILL STREET BLUES!!!

2. "Get It On" - Turbonegro A homoerotic choice for a the most homoerotic of sport. A great way to spread the most American of sports across the Atlantic to those soccer loving Euro countries. And Hank could probably make a great nose tackle.

1. "Winner" - Cheeseburger We we'll keep beating that drum, sounding that horn, waving that flag until this band gets the love it deserves. "Winner" is full of amazing sports metaphors, the catchiest guitar riffs in years, and a sincere plea for recognizing all around excellence. How could you not be ready for some football after cranking the shit out of this? If not you must be dead inside, and you're sure as hell ain't Heavy Duty.

New Music Tuesday - The Duty Gets Back to Metals

2011-10-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

Here's The Heavy Duty's random roundup of Tuesday's new music releases:

Metals - Feist Comes with a complementary tall americano and moleskine notebook.

Pighammer - Wayne Static I swear I didn't make this up. Here is the link.

Beauty Queen Sister - Indigo Girls Emasculating dudes waaay before Apatow made Coldplay the go-to zing.

Working in Tennessee - Merle Haggard What or who is the all time best Haggar? Sammy Haggar, Mike Haggar of Final Fight fame, or Haggar Casual Slacks? Settle it in the comments!

People & Things - Jack's Mannequin I always thought this band name was a reference I didn't get. I was wrong.

Devil's Rain - The Misfits I'd rather check out that Danzig legacy show coming up on Friday in Chicago.

The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle - Closing the Blinds Edition

2011-10-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

This is a feature post for the Duty, known as The Sunday Cool Down Shuffle. We load up the iTunes, hit shuffle, and write about the first 10 songs that come up no matter what. Got it?

10. "It's A Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock N Roll)" - AC/DC Wait a minute, this is the first song on my iTunes. I musta fucked up the Shuffle controls.

9. "Days of the North Wind" - I Worst cover art since Gary Hoey's Money.

8. "Spokane Motel Blues" - Joel RL Phelps The Amazon review says, "Only a few interpretations miss the mark: Joel R. L. Phelps's tortured vocal beats down the subtle humor of "Spokane Motel Blues..." But that's the best part!

7. "Megalomania" - Black Sabbath "The ghost of tomorrow from my favorite dream..." Ha! This song's all dumb and boring until about three minutes in when it turns into a mid-70s strut rocker and makes me dance around my apartment making goofy faces and pumping my fist like Billy Idol. I think I'm gonna watch that 1978 Sabbath DVD again, the one where Bill Ward has six pigtails flapping around and still looks like he'd kick your ass.

6. "Beyond the Realms of the Death" - Judas Priest Awesome, Shuffle reads The Duty!

5. "When the Shit Hits the Fan" - Circle Jerks First song I learned to play on guitar! "Soup lines / Freeeeee loaves of bread / Five pound blocks of cheese / Bags of gro-cer-ies" Thirteen year old Dev was pretty smart, but I missed every one of these political implications.

4. "Row Nine" - Gone Shuffle likes to punish me for stocking him up with so many Greg Ginn solo records.

3. "F.O.A.D." - Darkthrone Fuck Off And Die. Zing! I like on the first song of A Blaze in the Northern Sky where the guy sings his own name: "Nocturno Cuuuuuulto." Darkthrone was ALWAYS Heavy Duty.

2. "B-Side Wins Again" - DJ Spooky vs. Dave Lombardo feat. Chuck D Restored my faith in Chuck D. Go listen to this right now.

1. "Stand By" - Earth Crisis FUCKYEAHHUMMUSPLATE