Skaven — Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Carbonized Records)
Flowers of Flesh and Blood by Skaven
Likely it was inevitable that some enterprising label would reissue the only record Skaven put out under its own name. During its intermittent existence, the crust band released a couple splits with heavyweights Dystopia and Stormcrow, and the long shadows cast by those bands have kept the splits in underground circulation. Flowers of Flesh and Blood, originally released in 1996 by brief-lived Misanthropic Records, has some additional historical utility. It sounds so very much like a record of its times and its scene: check out the semi-ironized, semi-serious samples from sources like Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) (“Severed” starts with the Torrance family’s Donner Party conversation, if you’re interested); the band name filched from Warhammer’s world of steampunk geekery; the greasy, fusty odor of dense packs of white dudes with long dreads and lots of stick-n-poke tats. 924 Gilman, here we come.
But listen more closely. Skaven has its idiosyncrasies, its own intrinsic oddness. The band incorporated two basses, Michael Matusio’s standard four-string axe and Shane O’Gallagher’s five-string instrument. O’Gallagher adds something like a second, downhill-rushing lead to the opening minutes of the title track. The doubled-up bottom end imbues Skaven’s sound with a disposition toward something like groove, which you can hear reverberating through subsequent recordings like Nux Vomica’s “Choked at the Roots.” Skaven’s sonic profile also flirts with deathrock’s more goth-oriented melodramatics. Check out the opening riff of “The Swarm,” and then its brief, melodic bridge; it sounds something like Only Theater of Pain-period Christian Death attempting to cover Amebix’s “No Gods No Masters.” But tougher, and better.
As those comparisons suggests, Flowers of Flesh and Blood is deep-catalog stuff, likely of principal interest to folks with outsized investments in the Bay Area heavy music scene. It captures a moment when weirdo bands (see Depressor’s stuff) were listening to lots of Swedish death metal and pushing the boundaries of the region’s distinctive stenchcore sound. Play it loud, and Skaven’s EP will put you in the mind of rodent-infested squats, room temperature 40-ouncers of malt liquor, clutches of kids debating the best train to hop if you need to get to Portland on the double-quick. Hey, hold on — where’d the dog go?
Hasbro - Carbonized Mandalorian Clearance by Darth Ray
Via Flickr:
Picked up on deep clearance at Target: Hasbro - Carbonized Star Wars Black Series from the Mandalorian Scout Trooper, Paz Vizsla, and Shoretrooper
God I'm a sucker for characters who are so utterly loyal to someone that they're completely unhinged. Characters who have no moral compass except their overwhelming devotion to whoever they've chosen to listen to. That's the good shit