Vomit Grinder: A master and his craft

Someone call the authorities! That poor child is not only being forced to wear track pants at an early age, she's also being subjected to seventh-rate pornogrind created by a man who wears pants so large they would have been mocked at a rave in 1995.

Man, you blink for only 20 years or so, and the entire pornogrind scene changes drastically. Back in my day, Traci Lords Loves Noise and early Meat Shits defined the sound of a musical movement that seemed unstoppable. Young upstarts, like Illinois' own Vaginal Dissection were making significant contributions through their endless flow of cassette releases.

Today, things have changed, and one primary outlet for this musical style is the medium known as the YouTube. All I have to say is, thank god for the YouTube. Today thanks to technology and the internet, we are brought inside the inner circle of pornogrind masters like Vomit Grinder, artists of the highest order who previously performed their craft in relative obscurity. No more. How many of us have said "Oh to have been a fly on the wall when Mozart wrote his Clarinet Concerto", I know I certainly have. Such longing is no longer warranted. Simply watch the videos below, and enjoy a rare insider's look at an artist and his craft.

Please note the tasteful decor which surrounds this musical genius as he works on his musical masterpieces. It appears as though he went to the Funeral Home Decoration Depot and simply said "I'll take it all". While the decor may not be groundbreaking to other trailer owners, the rest of us are left in an emotional state upon seeing such beauty. Like a fat American tourist who sees Versailles for the first time, it becomes clear that while such opulence is common for those who live in it, the rest of us are simply looking from the outside in.

Enjoy his oversized pants, his huge amp, and please note his creative solution for not having a mic stand. Oh, and one last thing, look closely in the second video, as you will surely see the muses that inspire this creative genius.

What will they think of next: Purulent Jacuzzi

"Get me Putin!"

Until very recently, there was a place in Seattle called "Tubs" in which you could rent a jacuzzi by the hour. Yes, I know what you are thinking- everybody in the area also recoiled in horror at the idea of submerging their genitals in a rancid bath that is more or less a stew made from the lower bodies of whatever strangers happened to be rent the jacuzzi before you did.

I am pretty sure the drummer is the guy who invented Tetris. Either that or a pedophile. Maybe both.

I could go into more detail, but thanks to the wonders of Web 2.0, I can simply crowdsource it from Yelp!! Yay internets! (I feel like there is someone at IDEO or Frog right now coughing awkwardly to remind me that they coined the term "crowdsourcing" in 2002). Here are a few highlights from consumer reviews:

Brooke B.
It has been fun making jokes about contracting the clap from your titular "tubs" for the last 10 years. It was always my plan to bring a special someone and a bucket of Ezell's fried chicken to a private room and really get down. Thanks for the memories, Tubs. You will be missed.

JC D.
Ari:OMG, I'm so embarrassed!
Tanya:Rumor has it that people were having sex in the totally secluded hot tubs, so they got shutdown.
JC: Yeah, people would fling gonorrhea and Chlamydia at the walls.
Ari: ehhhh...okay.
Tanya: I'm HUNGRY!
The place is obviously still closed, and surprisingly fenced up by the health department and the humane society.

Mr. Robot O.
I visited here in an "official" capacity as an inspector, not a customer, so I only got to look at, and not enjoy, the "sparkling acrylic spas with hydro-therapy jets" constructed with "state-of-the-art spa engineering."
The thought of paying someone so I could lounge around in these giant petri dishes wasn't that enticing.

With bands like the Meat Shits and Gut pushing the boundaries of poor taste over the past decade or two, it's harder than ever to shock audiences. You really have to dig deep to find something inspiring that's novel, unique yet completely foul and disgusting. For Russian goregrind band Purulent Jacuzzi, Tubs is just that source of inspiration.


That's what I tell myself, at least. I certainly can't think or any other reason why a band would call themselves fucking Purulent Jacuzzi! At first I thought it was some sort of misunderstanding; I figured they just didn't really understand what the fuck they were saying. I assumed it was like Lisa Simpson said when she saw a poster for the movie Yahoo Serious: "Those words are both English, but they don't make any sense together!"



But no! From the image above, it seems that they understand exactly what those words mean and are using them quite literally! Best of all, they are pretty fucking good, especially the song in the video above. I'm not all that crazy about bree-bree vocals, but the singer for PJ pulls them off about as well as anybody, and they definitely have their share crushing slamz.

If there is anything to take away from all this, it is that no man has a crystal ball. Wait, that's not true, Mike Browning has the Nocturnus crystal ball. But aside from him, we are all powerless to predict what strange, new, exciting forms of music are coming around the bend. All we can do is sit back and enjoy the show... and mosh our balls off to Purulent Jacuzzi.

Metal Archeology: Artifacts of a lifetime devoted to metal (Part 1)

Just as archeology draws upon the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics and paleontology, metal archeology draws from other sources...mostly old Wild Rags catalogs. How else can you perform accurate carbon dating on my Gammacide 12"?

Just as archeologists carefully dig through piles of rubble in search of artifacts that can give us further information about previous societies, I too have chosen to dig through my own personal rubble in search of answers and artifacts. After what has been nearly a lifelong commitment to metal (in one way or another), I have accumulated assorted artifacts which bring back memories of the past. I have discussed my homemade Morbid Angel shirt, my autographed Obituary drumsticks, my guitar pick collection and other items from my past in previous posts. I shall now continue in that direction, aiming to dig deep into my past (a sometimes embarrassing past) in order to make sense of just who I was at the time. Part archeology dig, part psychotherapy session, I hope this series of ongoing posts will prove to be both insightful and therapeutic to our devoted readers. I shall call this new science: Metal Archeology. Let's get started.


The autographed Impetigo Picture

What an insanely fashionable bunch. "Violate caskets"? Uh...okay.
Notice Stevo's variation on the "holding a grapefuit" pose...apparently the grapefruit he's holding is super heavy.

While at my brother's home only weeks ago I saw a small pile of metal rubble which, to a metal archeologist like me, seemed like an unmistakable sign that amazing finds could lay within its depths. I asked permission to go through the pile, and was quickly rewarded with the item you see above, a picture of Impetigo signed by Mark, and dedicated to my brother. As quickly as I found the picture, the memories began pouring in.

It was a very different time back then. The early 90s (for those of us involved in underground metal culture) was a time largely spent "doing mail", as we called it then. At the risk of sounding like a grandpa, there was no email then, or inexpensive ways to call long distance. As a result of this, all communication was done via mail, and if you were involved in a band, distro, zine or booking shows, you ended up doing significant amounts of mail. In the early 90s, it was primarily my brother who would spend entire Saturdays "doing mail." I did my fair amount of writing, mostly trading death metal videos with other weirdos like Pat from Hellwitch. Doing mail on Saturday, meant going through the envelopes and packages that had arrived all week, and fulfilling orders, answering letters and the like. Out of the suburban basement that we shared at our parents house, we ran what I guess you could call a label, and a distro, as well as a video 'zine, a band, and several awful side projects. We also began to book shows at some point, and did a weekly radio for nearly a decade. These were mostly my brother's projects, in which I played a secondary role. All these projects combined meant a substantial amount of mail was constantly pouring in, filled with all kinds of demos for trade, free shirts, and the occasional box of free CD's and 7" records from Wild Rags (as a result of me being in what today would be referred to as their street team.)

I would often find myself on Saturdays dubbing hours and hours worth of concert footage in order to trade a video with some dude in Ecuador, or Greece. My video list was extensive, and had a few choice pieces that were consistently requested by all kinds of people who sent me their video lists on an almost weekly basis.

When people say that a certain musical scene felt more tightly knit at an earlier time, I usually cringe...but in retrospect it may have been true. We didn't know any of the people we wrote to, so perhaps "tight" is not the right way to put it, but the sheer amount of time and effort that you had to invest into any project always ended up consuming a substantial amount of your days. In case you're wondering, all of our efforts (however awful they were) mostly revolved around the underground death metal and the noise/grindcore scenes of the day. Few, if any, of these bands had any vinyl out, and certainly no CDs. The only acceptable format was cassette. In the case of noise bands, all the official releases were dubbed onto TDK 60 minute tapes, along with cheap, photocopied covers.

See, like any real metal fans back then, we concentrated our efforts primarily around unsigned bands whose demos we would get in the mail. Along with the demos, flier trading was common and popular. As such, we would often send individuals as many as a hundred fliers for our radio show, which they would then send out in each package and letter they sent out to other people all over the world. It was this way that bands from Turkey and Sweden would end up sending us their records and tapes so they could be played in a station they would never hear. If anyone was heavily into trading back then, you'll probably remember that the band Phantasm easily had the most fliers in circulation. Those guys must have all worked at Kinkos or something.

It was in this climate that my brother and I would often befriend (if only by mail) members of bands that we loved, such as Impetigo. I'm not sure how the correspondence with Impetigo began, perhaps my brother can clarify, but I'm sure it was something like us buying their VHS video through the mail, or them sending us music to be played on the radio show. Either way, Mark from Impetigo's letters and packages became a fixture in our mailbox. I distinctly remember him being the first person I knew who asked for his stamps back whenever you wrote him. At first, I didn't understand why he would want his stamps back, but quickly realized that he was coating them with a thin film of Elmer's glue or soap, making the ink of the post office's rubber stamp come off with water, thus making them usable once again. My brother and I quickly adapted the trick ourselves, making our budget for stamps and postage suddenly become much lower. As a result of this latest trick, our small basement bathroom sink was usually filled with water, in which stamps were left to soak in order to be reused. I distinctly remember our hand towel (which hung under our Order From Chaos poster) being used for endless rows of stamps that were left to dry by the sink.

It was in one of these exchanges of mail with Mark from Impetigo that he sent the picture to my brother.

The picture hung above my brother's desk for many years, the desk where he would sit for hours on Saturday mornings and afternoons to "do mail."

Retroview: Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!

I believe in being honest with each other, in telling the truth to on another. And the truth is that back in the early 90s most of us Metal Inquisition staffers were pretty into grindcore, noisecore, and other genres of music other than generic death metal. It's true- I have very eclectic tastes. I mean, I'll listen to anything from Psycho to Jesus Chrust! For someone like me with such varied tastes, the Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh compilations on Slap-A-Ham Records were crucial. Although there were 3 records in the series, only the first two were really good. By the time the third one came out, the scene had been infiltrated by posers and punk rockers, so the series had pretty much jumped the shark. This isn't an MP3 blog, but since Slap-A-Ham is out of business, here's a link.

Highlights: With over 100 songs to choose from there, are a lot of good ones. But within the context of this blog, the highlights include the sick sewer sludge proto-Devourment stylings of Rottrevore, the only good Agathocles song, the best Infest song, and Impetigo. There are also lots of good bands on here that played really, really sick guttural death metal way before the style was really established, as well as the greats of noisecore like Cacofonia, 7MON and Meatshits. And Sockeye!


Lowlights: There are also dozens of awful songs on here, but fortunately they're no longer than 15 seconds, so the shitty songs are over before you know it. It being a 90s grind comp, it has tracks from Psycho and Agathocles (although, like I said, the Agathocles song is actually good). I also think Assuck is a terrible band and they are on here, featuring Rob Proctor's weak cheat-beat blasts. The Generica song is so bad that even :15 of it is hard to endure.

WTF: One thing I've noticed is that these comps feature a lot of bands who only have one good song, and it appears on these records. I sought out other records by some of these bands based on their songs here only to be very, very disappointed. For example, Splattereah, Suppuration, Dischange, and Rupture (why do all the other Rupture songs sound like crappy Dwarves songs?).