Thing of the Day
Devil Driver, Zu Shapes, The Great Malarky and the the Shunt collective...
February 22nd 2011
Today’s thing is either the brutal thing that is Santa
Barbara, California’s Devil
Driver and their new album Beast, or the rather unbrutal
thing that is Baltimore, Maryland’s Friends
Records and a taste on the new EP from Zu Shapes….
DEVIL DRIVER – Beast
(Roadrunner) – Now why does Devil Driver’s tantrum-throwing metal
onslaught hit a spot that most of the other slick modern glossy metal
machines don’t? Their dervish of an onslaught, their relentless
pounding and their cartoon disembowelling violence. The U.S band have
been consistently good, this latest album Beast is pretty much more of
the same as the previous four – animalistic, primal lashes, death metal
pounding and propulsive thrashing, giant hooks, metal whirlwinds,
tornadoes of aggression (when you know they’re really pussycats), storm
of drumming, stomp of vocals, screaming bloody gore and everything bang
to rights (dead to rights?). Stomping storming modern glossy metal that
for some reason that we don’t need to analyse or think about too much,
satisfies in just the right brutal tantrum throwing everything out of
the pram violent kind of way.
Beast is out in the UK this week. More from
www.roadrunnerrecords.co.uk
www.devildriver.com
Here’s the opening track off the new album:
And for those who like things a little more relaxed and a tiny bit less
brutal...
Baltimore label Friends Records
have just posted a new track
from the very mellow ZU
SHAPES. Zu Shapes is Beau Cole of Lands
& Peoples and Raindeer and the track is called Olivia, you can
download it now from the Friends Soundcloud page. Actually there’s a
whole load of fine earfood to be explored on the Friends Soundcloud
page. Alternatively you can download the track for free from the Zu
Shapes Bandcamp page, where they tell us that “this is a track off of
Zu Shapes' upcoming Merigold EP". Good to see them making a point of
crediting the artwork as well, seems it is by Na Kim, which in turn
sent to explore the good looking creativity to be na-kim.blogspot.com
About Friends: “Brett Yale runs a Baltimore music blog, and Jimmy
MacMillan works downtown at a record store. Naturally, they are
friends. They both have friends that create music, and they both embody
a passion for sharing it.
Friends Records is the result, a small Baltimore music outlet that will
focus on high quality analogue products with an understanding of all
the rest”.
And that just took us to Brett’s Baltimore Music Blog BMORE MUSICALLY
INFORMED, and now we have a load more to explore, so we’ll
leave you with
this for an alternative Thing Of The Day.
You don’t need us to actually write about Zu Shapes do you? You have
the link to the music right there, please go have a taste and enjoy…
http://soundcloud.com/friendsrecords
zushapes.bandcamp.com/track/olivia
www.friendsrecordsbaltimore.com/
www.bmoremusic.net/
And finally today, before we go, a couple of parish notices…
Here you are ladies and gentlemen, the debut video
born from the lanes
of East London via the most Northern and most Southern towns of
Ireland, and a new band THE
GREAT MALARKEY, the song is titled MERRY
PROFITS, it comes from their forthcoming EP…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FufR9YLTrQ0
”Meeting in the darkened corners of the east end cabaret scene, they
have decided to take to the stage with their London shanties, telling
the stories of all they have seen. Get your boots on, dust off your
hats, warm up those vocal chords and buckle your braces, ladies and
gentlemen, this is The Great Malarkey”
http://www.myspace.com/thegreatmalarkey
http://thegreatmalarkey.com/
Exiled from their London Bridge vaults lounge thanks to work on some
shard of a tower , the ever inventive SHUNT COLLECTIVE have moved over
to the ICA to bring us five days of live performance to
experience for free. All kinds of performance going on - get tattooed in
the goods lift, race sewing machines and witness long dead birds begin
to breathe again in the gallery...
“Step in deeper and watch short films and gawp at a prehistoric monkey baby in an incubator in the bar, wonder at dogs let loose on the ground floor, watch out for an encounter with the embodiment of political and economic evil, witness nothingness, loneliness, grotesque puppetry and paranoid cabaret in the theatre and…”
Shunt at the ICA starts on Wednesday 23 and runs till Sunday 27
February. Entry is free. The ICA is on the Mall, central London
http://www.shunt.co.uk/
