Thinking Man's Idiot Online

shaking off the husk of a dead year:2011

2012-01-10T21:21:00.000-08:00

This time last year I was slightly worried. Walking for hours around the city, leaving CV's all over the place, hoping that my face could portray the perfect blend of confidence and desperation... that kitchen managers or art gallery owners or shop clerks or tired looking owners of failing businesses around Montreal might see in my posture that I am capable, honest, willing to row in time to their drum... but that some play of light on my slightly furrowed brow might speak to these prospective employers my need, my hunger. The fact that bills were piling up, but illustration jobs were not, was gnawing at me. The streets were fucking desolate in January 2011. The only "help wanted" sign I came across was at a Dunkin Donuts and even they didn't get back to me(thankfully).

Things started to look up though, even if it didn't come easy. I put up with one very sad coffee shop owner and her tactless attempts to "train" me. For three weeks, while she performed with ringing bells and stinging, bitter laughs the subtle art of "motivation through humiliation", I fed myself on sadistic fantasies of work related "accidents" involving pots of boiling liquids or every sharp object on the premises. I got through it and squeezed every penny out of that horrid experience that I possibly could. I took my firing as a personal victory... and I took every odd job that I could get before I went out for tour in March, from helping a friend move to doing inventory at my Mom's store to pimping myself out for small illustration jobs (and a couple bigger ones). I made it through the Great Sabatini tour of the States and Canada with barely 50 bucks in my pocket for the whole 3 weeks (as Rob has done several times) and I put myself to the task of learning the sacred art of needles and flesh (that's tattooing for you less dramatic folk out there) like my fucking life depended on it. We recorded a full length album (MATTERHORN) and an ep (virtually every unrecorded song we have thus far) both of which sound (to me) like a million trumpets tearing the fabric of reality to shreds with the awesomeness of their sonic majesty. I started working part time again for my friend Rob Callard, and felt blessed to have 20 or so hours of stability in my life each week. We released our first piece of vinyl (Napoleon Sodomite 7")and and thus my oldest and most hallowed dream was realized. TGS managed to shoot videos for all 3 songs from that 7" record (Still being edited as I write this). I got better at the tattoo thing, I did some cool graphic jobs for some great bands, and I pulled myself out of the pile of corpses 2011 had dumped on me at the start. Fuck lemons... when life gives you mountains of cadavers and expects you to just roll into the pile and join them, what do you do? You pull yourself out and build a crematorium.

Not that I want to boast... I took every sign of a positive outcome this past year as a major victory not just for me, but for US. Because every step of the way I had my wife holding me up, morally, financially. I had friends that came into my "dining room" and let me make them bleed, make them have permanent pictures in their skin... some of these friends even came from far away to let me do that. I even brought my tools with me and inked some friends on the East Coast, 2 of them in a marathon session that went till 8:30AM in a vacant apartment in Moncton. I had brothers and parents and friends who literally put the tattoo machines into my hands and shoved me over the edge into a sea of brand new possibilities. I had friends who came into the studio and played things, or tirelessly twiddled knobs to make it all sound good. I had a cousin who recorded a great deal of our music for a slaves wage (at best). I had the immeasurable strength of LOVE behind me every step of the way... the cold grey heart of this year could do nothing but wither at the sight of it, and I can't help but be filled with mirth as I dash it's head right the fuck off, and pour it's nourishing blood into my battle-cry bellowing mouth. I did it with You, we did it together, and I will never take any of you for granted. One day these things called "years" will have the last laugh, and we'll all be dead, but we can die knowing that we stepped on Time's toes with every move along the way.

What keeps me going, every day, is music. 2011 had some great music, and to be honest it was hard keeping up with it. For all the new shit I loved this past year, there are still things on my wish list, like the most recent records from Ed Gein, Engineer and Yob to name a few. But I did have fleeting love affairs with a number of albums in 2011... most of them stayed in rotation for a few weeks at a time, but only a handful are still getting played regularly around here. Even though I love all of these records, the ones that rise to the top for me are the ones that I simply never tire of. If a record can be put on endless repeat the way Sloan's "Twice Removed" was when I was 15 or 16, then that is a good sign that the album RULES. Maybe it's cos I'm getting older, but those real sticky records are getting harder to find. Anyways, here's my list of ALL the albums (no sense in narrowing it down) that kicked my ass in 2011.

Primus "Green Naugahyde". This fits very very nicely into their legacy.

Electro Quarterstaff "Aykroyd". Don't sleep on this record. Better than "Gretzky" I think.

Tom Waits "Bad As Me". Just a great record.

Raphael Sadiq "Stone Rollin'". This album has very respectful nods to every major force in soul music history. A throwback in a good good way.

Fuck The Facts "Die Miserable". Easily one of my favourites. FTF get better with every record.

Hate Eternal "Phoenix Among The Ashes". Death metal is boring as fuck to me at this point. Still, Hate Eternal manage to be a real sounding band with often weird (yet still brutal) moments on their albums. Example: The Art Of Redemption

Origin "Entity". I had zero hopes for this band or album. Sure, they are all brutal shred wraiths on the respective instruments but the last 2 albums were totally unmemorable. "Entity" however turned out to be baby-killing-brutal and relatively song and hook oriented (for them). Good thing I saw them steal the show on tour with Hate Eternal or I wouldn't have picked this up.

All Pigs Must Die "God Is War". This Entombed via Cursed blackened death n' roll crusty hardcore trend will be dying any minute now but there's no denying that this album rocks me hard.

Today Is The Day "Pain Is A Warning". Steve never stops delivering slabs of american hardship.

Trap Them "Darker Handcraft". See the All Pigs Must Die comment.

Earth "angels of darkness, Demons Of Light I". Adding cello to the ensemble was a great idea. Not a big shift from the last 2 albums but more of a good thing is ok with me. Side 3 (the title track) worth it alone. Can't wait for part II.

Ulcerate "destroyers of all". I thought Hate Eternal and Origin's albums were refreshing death metal releases. "Destroyers Of All" makes them sound as fresh as day old bread.

Death Grips "Ex-military" Free digital release of angry hobo rap anthems AND bloody-knuckled drum maniac Zach Hill is involved too? Sold.

Tyler The Creator "Goblin". Ok, there's more angst on this than all of Eminems' albums combined, and most of it is kinda mindless and mosh-pit oriented but I liked this album a lot. Some genuinely weird keyboard oriented beats and unique flow. I'm too old for this probly but it was a great summer record.

Ghostface Killah "Apollo Kids". Solid. Ghost is one of my all time favs. Have you read his reviews of other artists? Jesus, he clearly has a way with words.

Indian "Graceless". Super bleak. Good good shit.

KEN mode "Venerable". This is also one of my favourite, hands down, albums of 2011. It's still doesn't hold a place in my heart like "Reprisal" does but getting a new KEN mode album remains an event for me. I still listen to this a couple times a week...

Some re-issues or re-printings of older albums came out in 2011 that made me very, very happy. I picked up newly pressed LP versions of Helmet's "Strap It On", Discordance Axis' "Inalienable Dreamless", Mark Hollis' 1998 self titled solo album and, my favourite album for the last 3 years (well, since I first heard it), Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock".

"Laughing Stock", as well as Hollis' solo record, have never been domestically available here in North merica, so getting copies of each for just under 20 bucks was incredible... "Laughing Stock" is so profound an album for me that acquiring it on LP was like a small dream come true. I never really see the point in picking one overall favourite when it comes to music but I love every note, every frequency of music on there, and I never get bored with any of it. It's like this album is hard-wired right to my innermost workings, tethered to my soul. To borrow a term from the title of a book, "Laughing Stock" is nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

My beautiful wife was kind enough tto give me the immaculately packaged "SMiLE Sessions" Beach Boys box set for christmas. It has two LP's, two 45rpm singles and 5 cd's worth of music in it. It all is pretty cool for the nerds like me who wanna pour over vocal takes and listen to weird fragments from those weird, abandoned sessions but the real heart of it is in the actual SMiLE album. Put together using Brian Wilson's 2004 SMiLE record as a template, we now get to hear the almost finished album as the Beach Boys made it... and it's a stunning piece of work. Grasping the true genius of not only Wilson but his writing partner Van Dyke Parks is now somewhat possible. These guys made something that, even by today's standards, is incredibly complex. The vocal arrangements alone bring tears to my eyes. It's no wonder it took 40 some odd years to complete, but the incredible thing with the "SMiLE Sessions" is that you can hear just how close they were to actually finishing the record back in the 60's. But if one considers the jump from Pet Sounds to SMiLE, there's little wonder it freaked everyone out so much then... even today some of the transitions seem random and cut together... The divide between what fans expected of the Beach Boys and what Brian was doing in the studio with SMiLE is so vast that it's a little jarring. My own mother, who certainly appreciates the Beach Boys, thinks that SMiLE sounds "weird", and not in a good way. It's an alienating type of record if you're really only a fan of "Little Deuce Coupe" or "Help Me Rhonda".

Despite how "far out" this shit is for something in the pop realm, over all I love this record so much cos it's so, so uplifting. I can listen to all the bleakest doom or grindcore all day and love it, but sometimes I just wanna hear some music that will make me happy by communicating happiness to me... not necessarily by communicating a relate-able feeling of rage at our increasingly dystopian landscape. Expressing joy through music seems like the path less travelled, at least in my world. It's pretty cool that Brian Wilson is still alive and well enough to help bring this revelation to the people. SMiLE (2004)was a great record, and so is the "SMiLE Sessions. Check out either of them if you haven't heard 'em. Both are worth every penny and might do what little else out there is doing... inspire you to actually do what the title of the record states... Smile.

A couple of "free" downloads I got this year have made me plenty happy. There are 3 that come to mind right away. First, ANION from Vancouver are a great band with some free stuff up on their BANDCAMP PAGE. Go get it! Also, Toronto's GODSTOPPER made my year with their genuinely creepy sounding tape (DOWNLOAD HERE!. They made a stunning video for the track Clean House. Lastly, my friend and drummer Steve has a Hip Hop secret identity in Lex Vegas, and he's put out his first ep under that banner. It is really really good. Grab it HERE

I'm sure there were other records that I really dug in 2011 from bands and artists great and small, but it's just not coming to me right now. In any case, my new year's resolution is to be more active as a blogger. I intend to write at least one article a week for Thinking Man's Idiot Online, and I'm sure there will be plenty of links to some incredible music out there popping up for free or for dirt, dirt cheap. Please check back to read my moronic thoughts on everything, and for god's sake, go download that newest Louis CK standup special from his website for 5 fuckin bucks.

Thank you and goodnight

Wurmzilla AKA the Thinking Man's Idiot

Sabatini War Journal: North America Spring 2011 (march 9-April 3)

2011-04-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

I had kept a tour journal diligently, as usual... documenting our misadventures prolifically in several volumes which were confiscated at the border upon re-entry to Canada. It seems that the Canadian government didn't appreciate the sordid tales of our drug addled Rock and Roll excesses... or the fact that they couldn't identify whether the blood it was written in was human or animal. (whats the difference?) What follows is a chronologically bastardized recollection of the events that transpired in March and April of 2011. I tried my best to recall all the interesting parts of the tour, and I promise, I didn't embellish a fucking thing.

There was no sense of urgency or mounting anticipation in the weeks leading up to this most recent tour of duty. Last fall, prior to our departure for the Tragical Misery Tour, there were interviews to do, blogs to write, bestial rituals to perform... and I think we all felt there was a sense of occasion to the upcoming string of dates across the continent. But we left for tour this time around with little fanfare, real or imagined... only a quiet sense of duty accompanied by the dull ache of pulling ourselves away from our daily comforts. This is becoming routine now.

Of course I don't mean to underplay the excitement we all share in doing what we do. In fact, I've never felt more savage about wielding my axe every night... it's just that the ups and downs of road life are now utterly familiar to us all. We knew that during the next 26 days we'd eat many peanut butter sandwiches (or rammen noodles) in many walmart parking lots after playing to a handful of people in small bars or smaller basements with bare concrete floors. Some of these days would make us question our life choices and others would completely validate them in the electric rapture of Rock and Roll ecstasy. All of it would taste familar.

To be honest, those quasi religious moments are the part I look forward to the most. Completely forgetting about where I am and who I am doesn't happen every night, but when it does, it reinforces every un-jaded, heart-on-sleeve notion I've ever had about playing music. The PEN15 house in Duluth, Minnesota could have been Wembley fucking stadium. When the most primal scream I could muster was returned in kind by those people, and I threw myself into their ungentle arms, I felt it was a sight that would strike fear into the hearts of the insincere. Sharing what we did with the good people in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who came out in no small number on a monday night to see 3 touring bands (and the great local band) was a knife in the gut for the conventional idea of success. We're not here to join the vanity parade. We're far too ugly anyways... all we'd like to do is throw stones of self righteousness at the preening carreerists. Fuck you. I'd rather keep chasing that wreckless bliss again and consider myself truely successful each time I catch it.

At some point in the van Rob said something about music (or art in general) being the only real magic in the world. This war I'm waging against silence and stillness and lies and (my own) apathy might just be my unconscious attempt to reclaim the magic that seemed to exist when I was a child. We have to prove that magic does exist every chance we get. Touring in a beat up van in and out of entire climate systems for weeks at a time in the hopes of making a carreer out of it is like swinging blindly at an iron pinata. With a plastic bat. Or, as a friend of mine once said, being a Canadian on tour stateside is like going into a kiln. Every time you go you come back a bit harder. At some point you may crack... So squeeze as much nectar as you can from each trip.

As a hungry animal out in the jungle I've learned a few things about picking off the weaker prey in the herd, or forraging for the sweeter fruits when and where I can. Employees at walmart must turn a blind eye to any "grazing" animals in their aisles. This is a useful bit of knowledge. Hot water is hard to come by. Most places will try to charge you for a cup of hot water with which you can make instant coffee, oatmeal, noodle soup etc. So try to keep your McDonalds or Subway cups and re-use them when in need of hot water. Even an empty McDonalds coffee cup can be useful. Most McDonalds locations have free wifi. You can avoid dirty looks and/or ejection when you need to spend a few hours sitting around with your laptop if you leave your 2 week old coffee cup on the table as a "fuck off I paid for something" talisman.

In Austin the parking scenario was looking dire. We wanted to come into town to catch some good bands during SXSW but we weren't ready for the full scope of the madness. A young girl working for the festival saw our van full of gear and lost looking faces and gave us a parking pass, thinking that we were performing that day. In a way it was good that we weren't. We had a nice bird's eye view of the carnage... looking down on the theatre of war we could see how easily any noise made would get swallowed in the giant, amorphis din. Trying to be heard or seen there seems daunting, at best. Walking down the streets all one can hear is the sound of a thousand bands playing a thousand different kinds of music all at once. We'd heard that there was a good day party happening for free so we went down to check it out. On the bill was KEN mode, Kill The Client, Cough, Magrudergrind, Gaza, Wormrot and others. And there was free beer, for a short time. After that we walked a few blocks over and saw Mose Giganticus play before heading out of town and settling in at a walmart somwhere near Fort Worth.

In a parking lot in Louisiana we fought boredom off with our flashlights. Rob and Steve both have digital cameras. By setting the exposure time to it's limit (around 15 seconds) you can allow youself enough time to draw a picture or write a message in the air with a light source, and capture it in a picture. We drove that idea into the fucking ground before retiring to the van to sleep.

Having my own music pressed on vinyl has been a lifelong dream of mine. I've had an obsession with the medium since before I could pronounce the word "record" properly. A few weeks before we left for tour we received the test pressings for our new 7" ep Napoleon Sodomite. My heart nearly exploded the first time I listened to it. Even though most bands seem to act cool about having their jams pressed on super-limited ultra obscure plastic circles with grooves in them, I just can't hide the boner in my pants when I think of our new record. Picking up the freshly minted 500 copies of Napoleon Sodomite in Columbus, Ohio was literally a dream come true for me. I can't shake the feeling that this will NEVER get old either. If I can manage to have real records made another 50 times before I die I swear to Beelzebub that my hands will shake with glee every time I drop the needle. I will never take this shit for granted.

We kept the records packed up in boxes for a few days as we worked our way south. The official release date for the record was April 15th but we couldn't put them on the merch table regardless...the covers weren't printed yet. However, realizing that I had all the artwork on my laptop we decided to stop in Dallas and have 50 covers printed up. We folded the covers and glued the wraparounds and put the first 50 records in their packages as the sun went down in San Antonio. We played in the back of a small mexican restaurant and all was right with the world.

Every tour seems to have a few albums that define the tour in some way. Last time MF Doom's first album (Operation Doomsday) and Torche's Songs For Singles got heavy van play. This time it was Illmatic (Nas, duh) and the newest KEN mode offering, Venerable. We also played cd's from Mose Giganticus and Goes Cube (whom we had the pleasure of sharing a stage with in Mississippi), but our daily musical diet was the usual cornucopia of cross-pollenated miscillanea... Joey introduced me to The Secret (amazing). Last tour he introduced me to Scott Walker... his record The Drift disturbed the shit out of me. Before bed I usually put Lhasa De Sela's The Living Road or the self titled Mark Hollis album on the 'ol ipod to gently usher myself into sleep (where I'm a viking).

Writing this after the fact, it seems that we went to bed in texas and woke up in Nebraska. There was no perceivable middle ground in terms of general temperature. The comfortable march warmth further south vanished instantly. Waking up in the van in Omaha I was sure that we were in hell and that it had frozen over. Whilst brushing my teeth in the bathroom of the walmart, I met an old man who claimed to be the devil. He smelled like soot and spoke only Black Sabbath lyrics. He was wearing a black velvet top coat and an army helmet, and he walked with a limp. He offered Rob some axel grease to help him curl his moustache... and then we walked him to his car. He wagged a bit of finger up at the sky, and said, to God presumably, "the first day that I met you, I was looking in the sky, when the sun turned all a blur and the thunderclouds rolled by. The sea began to shiver and the wind began to moan. It must have been a sign for me to leave you well alone." He gave us a knowing look and drove off blasting "Ride Of The Valkyries" into the still morning air from the speakers in his bitchin' camero.

Rob had a cold. Then so did I. We played in Minneapolis, then Duluth. By the time we hit Duluth I was sick as a dog. That night after the show we crossed the border back into Canada and within an hour we all had beds to sleep in at Steve's parent's place. There was also some home cookin waiting for us there. Despite the comfort I woke up still "feeling Minnesota" but this was the perfect place to be on the mend for a few days.

Winnipeg:Round 3. Joey flew out to Manitoba to meet us and finish up the tour. It felt great to have the King of all Assholes back in the fold, and the sonic violence erupted with ease that night. Adjustment time:2 or 3 seconds tops. Being back in Canada meant longer drives. By the time we made it to Ottawa from Sault Saint Marie, we were all exhausted, and running on almost no sleep. How would we muster the energy to deliver one more jaw dropping, life-changing performance for the good people in our Nation's capital? Being men with strong senses of honor and duty, we knew what we had to do; we found the weakest looking drug dealer and beat him with a sock full of leftover american coins (damn toll booths) and took his money and drugs. Then we smoked our newly acquired crack on Parliament Hill. Feeling renewed, we then took Ottawa's ear-pussies from behind and came inside them.

Instead of going straight home once we reached Montreal we decided to hit the casino with all the loads of cash we'd plundered from North America this time around. We lost it all in a single hand of black jack in the high roller's room. We're officially broke... please feel free to help us out by downloading our newest ep Napoleon Sodomite HERE (super cheap!) or ordering the 7" version of it HERE.

I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to all the amazing people we saw on tour this time around. All the folks we met for the first time as well as our good friends in faraway places. I speak for all of us when I say we already miss you all... Thanks for giving us a show, playing with us, coming out to the shows, giving us a place to crash, giving us food, making us laugh... I can't wait to get out there again. Please feel free to link this article to your favorite social networking site. We can use all the help we can get. Here's a bunch of shit that is tour related or came out around the time we were on tour:

Firstly, our friend Laramie Carlson from Duluth, Minnesota took the 2nd picture from the very top of this article, check out his awesome photography HERE and a video of us playing at the PEN15 House that he shot HERE. Also, go "like" his facebook page HERE

I did an interview with Toronto's Super Heavy Sounds while we were out. Check that out HERE and also download a comp they put together (FREE) that has one of our jams as well as a bunch of other fucking awesome Canadian hard stuff.

Our friend Damon (Thorazine Overdose Productions in Missouri) posted a video of us playing at the house in Marshall. CHECKITOUT

Metal Sucks has posted shit about us twice in recent times. Check out their kind words HERE

The new 7" ep (Napoleon Sodomite) which I mentioned earlier took us a while to put together. We started recording it last summer... Steve put a little video together of the session:

Some reviews for the record have been trickling in too. Heres some:

Pure Grain Audio

THE BIG TAKEOVER

EXCLAIM

the MANEATER

I'll post more of these as I find them.

Shortly before we left for tour we opened for Valient Thorr here in Montreal. Hard Times did an interview with Joey and I and also taped some of our set. Apparently we were so loud that dude's camera kept shutting off. Most excellent. INTERVIEW

THE SET

At some point last year in eastern Canada we taped the first 2 Cooking With The Wurm episodes, which detail ways in which one can dine effectively while touring. We only recently got them put together. I hope to do more before too long. Here they are, parts I and II:

This Year In Retrospect (Twenty-Ten)

2010-12-19T20:18:00.000-08:00

I've decided that I'm not really into lists. I like reading year-end lists but I'm bad at compiling them. There really isn't a clear cut way for me to box in my tastes, or represent that which I'm so passionate about by narrowing it all down to a definitive count of that which I found most compelling.

I did a fair bit of moving around this year, and in my travels I came across various things, people, shows, records and other assorted media, that provided me with some much needed escapism and, occasionally, some real transcendent moments. Here's a loose gathering of some of these things.

THE NYMPHETS. I had the pleasure of being called on by Jared and Johanna for their triumphant return to Montreal back in June. I learned 15 or 16 of their 2 minute(tops) punk gems for the show and squeezed in one frantic practice with them before we burned through the set at Divan Orange. At some point we'd decided to convene for a few dates in Eastern Canada in the fall, during Sabatini's big North American jaunt. By that time they had a new 7" in tow. At this point they have released 3 7"s, and an album in cd format, all of which are amazing. Their dedication to their craft inspires me. They are conscious of every facet of their game and I find everything they do to be of the highest quality. I offered to continue playing bass for them for the East coast dates and they took me up on it. Their attention to detail has had no small effect on how I approach my own band, as well as my other artistic endeavors. The new 7" is self released and, of course, excellent. You can probably get your hands on it by contacting them via their website HERE. Jared and Johanna also have a fully legit newsprint zine called LAURA which has been getting better with every issue. I really can't lavish enough praise upon them... I know a lot of people who are involved in great bands or artistic projects but few of them live their lives with so much raw dedication to self expression. The zine is dedicated to providing exposure to artists of all kinds. You may find it in record stores in Montreal, NYC, LA, Toronto and Calgary but you can always read it online HERE. Johanna is also a serious photographer and this year received a fair amount of attention for her series "To Come Within Reach Of You...", in which she followed her estranged father around Stockholm and photographed him clandestinely. I can't do any justice to how powerful these photos are so take a look at her website yourself HERE. I am hopeful that I will be collaborating with Johanna on the cover to the next Great Sabatini full length record sometime in 2011.

Another artist I have had the pleasure of working with this year is my friend Jen Storey. I love Jen's woodcut prints (a few of them are hanging on my wall) and find her style and vision to be really unique. Her prints are kinda cute and innocent but sometimes have a hint of darkness hidden under the surface. There's a playfulness that reminds me of the haziness of early childhood memories. Jen is currently finishing up the artwork for The Great Sabatini's forthcoming 7" called "Napoleon Sodomite". Each copy will have a hand printed cover. The record is just about ready to be sent off to print. I received the final master just last week. Check out Jen's website HERE.

One of the big influences on how I wanted to present the artwork for the "Napoleon Sodomite" 7" was Fuck The Facts. Their "Unnamed" 7" ep was so well put together that I felt we had to do as much as we could to make the packaging on our record something special. The actual ep is probably some of my favorite music from FTF in a long time. I don't think they've ever released anything I don't like, but it always feels like their ep's are my favorites. I really enjoyed their split with Leng Tche but "Unnamed" is fucking brilliant. And, as I said before, it's wrapped up in such a nice package. Mel (FTF vocalist) put it all together, as I understand. This attention to detail is what I really love about good records, and is what I find most compelling about buying music at this point. Substance, in the music as well as in the physicality of the thing, is what makes the statement of a song or record that much more profound. Check out Fuck The Facts HERE.

My younger cousin Li is in a band called Luther Higgs. I've seen them play many times now, but earlier this year I caught them at Katacombes and was blown away. I've had the privilege of witnessing them from their earliest stages, watching them continue to bloom. They are all into a lot of the same post-everything kinda stuff that I like so much, and the influences of Isis, Russian Circles, Pelican etc. are evident when you hear them, but there is something about their direction that I love: the simplicity. I've read a review or two and heard feedback from a few friends regarding their set opening for Sabatini in September at L'absynthe in Montreal. One thing that came up a few times was their age... they are young, and there are a few signs of their inexperience to be seen on stage... their gear for example, isn't necessarily the best, and maybe here and there one might catch a small misstep (if you're really listening, every band has those) but I was impressed by their maturity despite their fresh-facedness. A few friends and one review said that LH is a band "to look out for once they've grown up a bit", and this is true of course, but their appearance on the surface might be distracting folks from really hearing the awesome weapon of sound they have become. Their opening set in September sounded great and was performed with excellence. They've refined the structures of their songs. Boiled it down to simple and effective elements. There aren't a lot of riffs in the songs, just themes that repeat and build. None of it seems to me to be needlessly complicated. Each riff is gently pounded into your psyche, slowly and deliberately, until it builds into a crushing sonic wave. It's like the moon's gravity is slowly turning up the gain on their amps. I really enjoyed their 3 song demo "Oceanus". It requires patience and is really a lights out, headphone experience. There are no vocals to speak of but they are all the better for it. Listen to it (and find a download link for the demo) HERE. I can't wait to hear what they will do in the next year.

In the spring, on Sabatini's first ever run into the states, we ran into a band called An Airbag Saved My Life in Michigan. Later, in the fall, we wound up playing 3 or 4 shows with them in California and Oregon. The first time, I got their cdr demo called "Yeti" which consisted of one 20 minute song, and I loved it. When we met on the West Coast, I got my hands on their newest, called "The Morning Fox", which I like even better. They have a psychedelic doom thing going on which immediately appeals to me but as per usual the real draw for me is in the subtle shades. There are colors in the music that I hear, like some kind of synesthesia. This is rare considering that both of their cdr's came in generic brown recycled paper sleeves. There's almost no aesthetic to be had, except for their t-shirts and some images on their myspace. But their delivery is full of fire and the music is full of hidden life. Perhaps the plain brown cardboard sleeves have acted like a blank canvas which the songs then fill in. I've listened to "Morning Fox" on repeat since I got home from tour in November. Here in the Sabatini camp we've been working on a LOT of new material and Luke (Airbag drummer and partial riff/lyric writer for that band) will be collaborating on some of this new Sabatini stuff from his home in Des Moines, Iowa. A sort of long distance relationship that we've started just to see what happens. Listen to AASML (both of their demos in their entirety) HERE.

A few other musical things that have left a mark on me this year are: Playing with Calgary's Mares Of Thrace at the Loft From Hell this summer. We all became fast friends and mutual admirers. Their current record, "The Moulting" is quite good. MARES

Playing a couple dates with Toronto's Vilipend was a good way to step up our game. They are fine gentlemen who offer a certain vibe with their Rock that I can't hear anywhere else. They really are the sum of their unique parts. Download their excellently well recorded "Live In Ajax" (featuring new songs man) HERE completely fucking free. I really liked their "Plague Bearer" 7" which was released this year as well. "Dulling Silver" is a favorite of mine.

My little brothers James and Chris recorded their band Endast's new album "Black Cloud" this year, but it has yet to see the light of day. It sounds amazing and a release is in the works, hopefully in 2011. On top of making a full length record, they toured the fuck out of 2010, and I was lucky enough to share the stage with them at their 1000th gig in Woodstock Ontario this year. That was a blast. Check out some of their new stuff HERE. They really are one of the hardest working bands in Canada.

On a somewhat related note, I acted as a session musician for James' ridiculous Christmas album, which you can download HERE. I had so much fun playing on that thing, which consists of Christmas standards that James sings (with as much attention to pitch as ODB), curses, and bleats on. I played acoustic and electric guitar, as well as banjo and zither. Our buddy Dave Sheldon came down to Mtl to record the thing in James' apartment. Last week Rob and I accompanied James onstage at his first Christmas food drive concert, playing selections from the record. Like the Vietnam War, if you weren't there, you just don't know what it really was. Be there next year.

Happy holidays,

Love S.

the TRAGICAL MISERY TOUR scrapbook of doom

2010-11-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Great Sabatini's month long odyssey of Rock across North America is done. This completes our Sad Parade Of Yesterdays tour cycle in 2010. We will be laying low and writing for the rest of the year.

The good folks at Canada's music authority, Exclaim, have been hosting my blog of our misadventures HERE, so curl up with some hot chocolate and get ready for an epic feelgood tale.

For anyone interested, I have compiled a few more links to interviews, show reviews, videos and whatnot from the Tragical Misery Tour 2010.

In New Brunswick: HERE NB

Up in Halifax, NS: The Coast

A show review from halifax with pics and video HERE

An interview with the Metal Mouth Media dudes in Halifax
Metal Mouth Media's episode 5, in which they talk about the show.

MOVE in Missouri.

The dude who put on our show in Fresno had THIS to say

BEATROUTE in Alberta.

Kypes shot this video in Vancouver.

Thanks to all the bands that played with us on this tour, and all the friends who came out. Hopefully in March we'll be out again, with a new 7"single for our song Napoleon Sodomite, which you can preview at our MYSPACE page.

Peace.

Sean

Old Man Hunger

2010-08-22T22:15:00.000-07:00

This fall will mark my thirteenth year or toil in the food service industry. Lucky number thirteen. As a teenager I sought to be gainfully employed and all I got was a job washing dishes for minimum wage at a popular breakfast spot. Flash forward a decade and change and I have done time in many kitchens, some for longer than others. I've met a variety of interesting people and some of them remain dear friends of mine to this day. I have no regrets. But on september 24th 2010 I will jump ship and leave the kitchen life behind, hopefully for all of fucking eternity. On september 29 I leave with the Great Sabatini for a month long trek through the burning wilderness of North America, and when I get home, my primary focus will be the arts.

To some it might not seem too strange to quit one's miserable rhythmic quotidian hell in search of something more, but to me it felt like a revelation when it occurred to me that I could simply stop and walk away from the status-quo routine and work at something that I love instead, like an invisible Tyler Durden was whispering in my ear one day at work. If I died tomorrow I would not be satisfied with what I've accomplished with my life. I've been a worker bee too long, in the service of some selfish queen. Fuck the queen. No longer will I walk in step with the other drones.

While rowing away on the great slave ship these past few years, there have been moments when the need to do something meaningful with my time outweighed my ability to be a rational person. I once smashed the kitchen radio to bits with an axe because I didn't think it should ever have to play another shitty piece of music again. Destroying it seemed to me at the time to be a far more creative act than mopping the floor or making another nacho platter, but it was a hard sell with my coworkers.

Of course, breaking free and following my "muse", whatever that means, will come with it's own set of challenges to face. But right from the start, I have have had a ton of support from my awesome wife, April, and my family and close friends. Nobody in my inner circle has tried to talk any sense into me. Maybe it's because they know it's no use. But probably because I'm lucky enough to have a very understanding group of people surrounding me. It also helps that I don't have a mortgage, car, child or any other kind of money-pit forcing me into a more financially stable (and personally compromising) scenario.

Steve Sabatini has very graciously donated much of his spare time to building me a website. WURMZILLA dot com is the place to see my newest work and get in touch with me. If you need art for a poster, album cover, t-shirt design, logo, etc. please check out the site and see if you think I might be your man. Right now the site is still pretty threadbare but we'll be working on it a lot in the next few weeks.

uncompromisingly yours,

S.

The Great Sabatini VS. the USA: Chapter 3 (crude matter)

2010-05-20T18:10:00.001-07:00

Richmond Virginia. There was not one article of clean clothing in our possession. Packing light is a blessing and a curse. We found a laundromat and fixed the problem.

The elbow joint in my right arm has been hurting for weeks. The tour has done nothing to help this predicament. It hurt to make a fist, so I tried not to make a fist.

By the time we hit Richmond, I was dangerously close to losing my voice. I have been doing the lion's share of vocal work. Combined with the fact that our amps are so loud every night that they render every p.a. system in every town utterly useless, I am walking a fine line with this... we, I, refuse to turn down to accommodate vocals. Or to appease any sound man's tender sensibilities. A few nights before in Baltimore we were so loud that every sound had a metallic ringing to it for an hour or two after the set. From that point on I began wearing earplugs for every band that played except for us. I can't scream and play at the same time with earplugs in.

Every tour we've been on has had it's own unique list of ailments. At least Steve and I are not being so destructive with our gear anymore. I'd rather destroy myself slowly than destroy our tools all at once.

We played at the Triple in Richmond, with a band called Gritter. Pretty good stoner/sludge type band. The Triple is ignoring the smoking ban, so their patron's cigarette smoke was doing nothing to help my voice. Justin from Herndon surprised us by showing up with a friend named Keely. A familiar face was a very uplifting thing to see. After the show, beer fueled conversation went on for hours. Birds were starting their day as I walked back to the van to sleep. Even with the windows open, the sun beating down on the van kept me awake... an undead ghoul laying restlessly inside an iron tomb, fully estranged from humanity. I stumbled down the empty street, groaning, hungry, back to Keely's place so I could devour the vulnerable flesh of my sleeping band-mates. I also had to take a leak pretty bad.

The drive to Akron, Ohio took all day. I found some lozenges that did almost nothing to help my voice. Conversationally, I sounded like Tom Waits in need of an exorcism. We got to Annabelle's and brought the gear in. Meet and greet with Forged In Flame from Cleveland. They were true gentlemen who played a great set. The local punk band who were "headlining" were a bunch of assholes. So it goes.

Steve hooked up a hotel room for us. He works at a Holiday Inn, so we got the inside deal. So many layers of filth washed off in the shower that I thought I would disappear entirely, right down the drain.

Ypsilanti, Michigan. It's fucking hot out. We're playing in a warehouse space that's been converted into an all ages venue. I had to ask a girl who worked there to unlock the bathroom, which is in an office around the corner. It smelled like someone had stuffed a thousand gumballs into a decomposing body.

An Airbag Saved My Life, from Iowa, were a monumentally psychedelic doom experience. Beast In The Field, whom we had been warned about at an earlier gig, were every bit as loud and heavy as I had expected. During our set I thought my voice would shit the bed for sure, but I made it to the end of the set without much trouble. The heat in that room... It felt like I had never sweat that hard before. Minus 9, a duo (bass and drums) from the area, didn't wait for us to finish tearing our gear down. They simply set up right next to us while we collected our stuff and started right away. They made it about 8 minutes into their set before Andrew, the bass player, stepped on his lead cable and pretty much prolapsed his bass amp. The input jack ripped right the fuck out. End of set, end of show, end of our tour.

On the way back home that night we drove through some serious fog. Fuck the Lone Ranger. He can have his sunsets. We'll ride off into the fog. Badass, evil fog of Rock.

S. Sabatini.

Thanks to all the promoters, people who came out to the shows, anyone who gave us a place to stay as well as all the bands that played. The bands that I personally dug the most are as follows: Check them out if you know what's good for you.

Forged In Flame

An Airbag Saved My Life

Self Evident

Ruiner

Dead Languages

Beast In The Field

Astronomer

Minus 9

Music Hates You

Akris

Gritter

Brickeater

The Great Sabatini VS. the USA: Chapter 2 ("So it goes")

2010-05-20T18:07:00.000-07:00

On the way to Harrisonburg, Virginia we drowned out the white noise of highway air rushing in through the windows with pure sonic malevolence... Blessed Are we, The Sick, who Arise in time for the World Downfall. By the time we arrive at our destination, the squeaking suspension on the van is not the only thing experiencing metal fatigue.

Some locals were having a hoedown to get city hall to put bike lanes in town. They relinquish some of their pot-luck food to Steve. We stare at ducks. Apparently, during the civil war, men were shot on the steps outside the courthouse, right next to the Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant/show-bar where we are to play that night. It seemed peaceful enough upon our arrival but thankfully, disorder was restored briefly that evening during our ritual of chaos. Also, I left something behind for a friend to find later on his travels through this area.

Slept in a bed at Adam's place in town. He is a jazz musician and journalist who did an interview with us the night prior for a local paper. A kind soul. It rained on us on our way back to the van in the morning. The rain wouldn't let up all day. Played in Herndon, VA at the So Addictive Lounge. I thoroughly enjoyed Music Hates You (from Georgia) as well as Akriss (a local I think). Met a fellow Hessian by the name of Justin who put us and Music Hates You up in his apartment for the night. His roommates were bothered by our late night revelry. Justin didn't care, so neither did we. I slept in the womb-van despite the comfy digs just because I like the solitude.

Baltimore is not a long drive from Herndon so we decided to kill time being tourists in D.C for the afternoon. It is a fascinating place despite being a dimly disturbing police state. President Lincoln just sat there gazing out over the mall and the multitudes at the giant phallus of political might. A sign at the entrance read "QUIET- RESPECT PLEASE" but the condition for this respect was casually ignored by all.

Baltimore was, in our eyes, a city of very little glory. Park benches with junkies sitting on them mockingly proclaim Baltimore the "Greatest City In America". While Steve and I walked around town a bit, Rob played guard dog with the van. We met some very good people in Baltimore but our paranoia crept into the overall vibe of the day. Steve from Ruiner very graciously opened his door to us for the night. I, of course, slept with one eye open in the van. Freight trains passing nearby eventually lulled me into unconsciousness.

A conversation about Kurt Vonnegut a few days earlier in the van prompted me to buy a paperback copy of Slaughterhouse-5 in Greenville, North Carolina for $2.75. I gave it up immediately to Rob, who had expressed his desire to read it. I'll read it again when he's done.

It was sunny in Greenville and the venue, the Tipsy Teapot, fed us sandwiches. We played that evening with Self Evident, Also on tour and far from their homes in Minneapolis. They responded to our wall of sounds in kind by throwing carefully sculpted shapes of sound back at us with equal amounts of passion and intensity. It's always refreshing when people from vastly different musical landscapes can find each other on some common ground. Music is the Great Bridge.

Later that night we played another set with Self Evident at a house nearby. It really felt like we were kids with no grown-ups around. Watching SE play their second set was a pure joy. There was no place for all the energy to escape from in that small room. All of us were conducting electricity together. We set up and ran through some jams that we hadn't played earlier. I was seriously lost in the exchange by the time we reached the coda in Long Division. Lightning struck the house and the earth cracked open. The Abyss stared back at me and I heard the call of the Beast resounding from the bowels of hell. I was a conduit for His Will. He ordered me to have another PBR, sleep in the van again and eat a 2 dollar meal deal at Taco Bell for breakfast... we had work to do spreading the Gospel of Judas the following day in Richmond.

The Great Sabatini Vs. the USA: Chapter I (Stay Fly)

2010-05-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

Tension melts away as we roll into Vermont on our way to our first ever American show, in Burlington. The U.S. border guards didn't give us much of a hard time. Just the standard Q & A. With all of this behind us and nothing to stand in the way of our inaugural U.S tour, vibe was high despite the fact that Joey Sabatini, our bass player, is not with us. Skeletons in closets sometimes refuse to go unseen. We have taken some measures to insure that our sound remains somewhat intact in the low end dept... Mainly that Rob Sabatini is playing his baritone guitar through his half stack as well as a bass amp with an octave pedal and distortion pedal to put more hair on the balls.

We arrived early in Burlington and found some food to eat. It was quite warm and sunny. We napped a bit on a church lawn and did what one does on tour 90% of the time: Wait. Wait to load in. Wait to set up. Wait to play for 30 minutes to almost nobody. The waiting is something we're used to. It's worth it just to play after chasing the carrot all day. I promised myself a long time ago that if only one person sincerely appreciates what we've come a long way to do, then it was worth every mile on the odometer. So far, the first three nights have been slim attendance-wise, but this modest goal has been met.

Burlington was a hardcore show where, as usual, we are the odd band out. Ruiner from Baltimore impressed me the most. Fine gentlemen who play good music. Stayed at Tyler and Matt's (Ghosting) place. They had a pile of records which they had found on the ground somewhere near their apartment. Inside the sleeve for a Singing Nun record they had discovered a 12" single for Three 6 Mafia's "Stay Fly". For reasons I can't fully grasp I think this is the most awesome thing I've ever heard.

Day 2 we roll into Lowell Massachusetts. Mexican food for supper. I am discovering that pay phones are pretty much non-existent at this point. My video camera is fucked up, so pictures and words will be the only documentation for this tour. Some girl in the audience requested that we play "Crazy Bitch". Rob called her a crazy bitch and we rolled on through our set. Dead Languages were amazing. Astronomer were pretty cool too.

Slept in a Walmart parking lot. Washed up and brushed my teeth in a Walmart bathroom. Hit the road for NYC.

Somehow we found a place to park in Brooklyn pretty close to the venue, called the Charleston. Being in this town for the first time, I can't help but think that I would love to live here, but that it would drive me crazy. There are people everywhere. The weather was nice and it seems to me that the entire world was hanging out in the park enjoying the day. Rob "showers" with a little help from a drinking fountain. I just sat under a tree and took it all in for a while. Found a record store and picked up a 7" I've been looking for. I also found a copy of my good friends Jared and Johanna's newsprint zine called "Laura".

The basement at the Charleston is small, dark and cold. Brickeater played and were pretty cool. Played to a few kind folks and hit the road for the nearest Walmart we could find in the gps, in New Jersey somewhere just over the bridge.

In a half sleep on one of the back benches in the van, I heard a single goose calling somewhere. I opened my eyes and saw one giant Canada Goose flying low over the van. I'm assuming he or she was going north. It was getting hot in the van. Summer is almost here.

When I first met you

2010-04-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend I purchased MASTER OF REALITY, an artifact of holiness made by BLACK SABBATH in the year 1971. This weighty carbon-black mandala spins on my turntable/altar at 33 and one third revolutions per minute and causes a spiritual wellness and/or mild ecstasy to spiral outward in the room from it's grooves. These effects can be amplified while the record is spinning simply by INCREASING THE VOLUME.

I do in fact find some spiritual solace in listening to this album. I have, for years now, made a private ritual of listening to MASTER OF REALITY in it's entirety in the morning, before a gig or before leaving for a tour, whenever possible. Even if I am milling about the apartment packing a bag or making coffee, the sound-waves contained on MASTER OF REALITY will reverberate through space and find me wherever I may be and my soul vibrates in time with it's hallowed frequencies. I have tried playing other Sabbath albums for my ritual but I always return to MASTER OF REALITY. This record seems to be alive in it's own way and will not be denied.

I have secretly coveted my good friend and former roommate Tim's battered copy of MASTER OF REALITY on LP from the very moment I saw it. I have acquired other BLACK SABBATH records on vinyl (Volume 4, Sabotage, an immaculate copy of the first album, and Mob Rules) much to my satisfaction, but MASTER OF REALITY has eluded me until recently... I could have searched the internet and bought a copy online but I always felt that it would find me at some point while probing through dusty record bins for some other album, by some other band. As it turns out, that is exactly what happened. Rhino has reissued MASTER OF REALITY quite nicely on thick, heavy 180 gram vinyl. Call the vinyl revival a trend if you will... this is a trend I intend to enjoy as long as some harder to find records are being re-pressed. It would of course have pleased me endlessly to have found an original pressing from the 70's but I don't want the record for it's collector's value or for some misguided record snob status. This gorgeous and newly minted version will serve me quite well for my Sacred Rock Ceremony from here on.

Not that I want to come off as some kind of Vinyl elitist or anything... I used my (amazing sounding) remastered cd copy for years now, and even listened to the cassette copy in the van on the way to a gig a few times, simply because MASTER OF REALITY is a very, very special album. Maybe it is my favorite SABBATH album. But choosing a favorite is difficult and probably pointless. At times, SABOTAGE has been my favorite, because it has some of the heaviest riffs in the BLACK SABBATH canon as well as some of the weirdest, most progressive moments. But maybe everything that BLACK SABBATH means to me in general was just perfected and honed on MASTER OF REALITY. It stands as a key-stone between generations too. My Father is not a BLACK SABBATH fan, but his generation and mine seem to converge with MASTER OF REALITY. These blues influenced hippies from the 60's wrote and recorded an album that fathered Heavy Metal as we know it... in a way, there was Rock and Roll before MASTER OF REALITY and Rock And Roll after MASTER OF REALITY. This album connects me and my music to my Father and his.

ALL HAIL SABBATH!

Much love,

Sean aka Wurmzilla aka The Thinking Man's Idiot.

The Great Sabatini & Friends In Montreal

2010-02-28T17:50:00.000-08:00

We're back from our east coast Canada tour. I wrote a tour blog which can be read at the Sabatini homepage

March will see us hitting the road on weekends in support of Sad Parade Of Yesterdays. March 20th in particular will be here in Montreal, our first local gig since the november 28th record launch.

I made this poster for the show. I wish I had the time to draw Alfred myself but I opted to borrow this image from an online source and paint his face in photoshop instead.

I'm looking forward to finally seeing Vilipend and Memories Of An Old Man as well as sharing the stage with my brothers (literally and figuratively) in Endast.
S.

Fresh Jams from the Great Sabatini

2010-02-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

We are about to head out to Eastern Canada in support of Sad Parade Of Yesterdays. We will be playing mostly songs from that album but we have been writing a lot of new material. In fact, most of our next full length album is written already.

We record just about everything we do as it comes, with a little help from some friends. Last time around, my good friend (and insanely talented drummer) Graham recorded us live in the jam room. We did 4 tracks but here you will find 2 of these which we will be playing at our upcoming shows. Please download these jams and spread them around like an STD. Here is the link: ROCK

See you somewhere on that road.

S.

This is not a year-end list of my top albums of 2009.

2009-12-18T21:09:00.000-08:00

Some of the records I purchased this year were disappointing. Some were pretty good. Some of them turned my brain into vibrating mud. Without consideration to genre, sub-genre, or to an order of personal preference, here are some albums from 2009 which I listened to and had thoughts about.

Sunn 0)))- Monoliths And Dimensions. The list of collaborators on this album is long and boring. The album itself is long and not so boring. I did think it was pretty cool that some dude who worked on Herbie Hancock's album Sextant (get that album now) was one of the collaborators. And the expanded instrumentation works real well, but I didn't have time to look at the liner notes... I was being summoned to dark spiritual planes. This album contains the correct frequencies to use when one wants not to gaze into the abyss, but to BE the abyss. This album has a song called "Alice" which is quite beautiful and is justifiably being written about by a lot by a lot of critics. This album fucking rules.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed- Agorapocalypse Now. All the things you've come to love about Agoraphobic Nosebleed are absent on this album. It is not lo-fi machine gun mind-rape. It is not convincingly misogynistic, like many of it's predecessors, mostly because there is a girl in the "band" now. It has a "drum solo". It sounds like it had a budget. All of these things are sore spots for a lot of long time fans apparently. What it is: fucking violence in the form of music. I don't want another "PCP Torpedo". I already have several albums worth of it. This is an interesting change of direction. The last few releases have been pointing in this direction, but the change was still a little jarring. But, it's still utterly abrasive and hateful. Instead of feeling like you're being gang-raped by robots with nail guns for hands, it kinda feels like you've had acid thrown in your face followed by an aluminum bat beating like the one from the movie Casino.

Raekwon- Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2. I've never cooked crack up in a coffee pot, or tortured a thug to death, or slashed up a crazy Rasta drug dealer who was peddling his wares on my territory. But what makes a story great is it's teller. My friend Tim made a great point... sampling "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" on the last track was a stroke of fucking genius.

Slayer - World Painted Blood. I can't remember a single riff from Slayer's last album, Christ Illusion. Half of this album is twice as good as anything on Christ Illusion. The other half is equally as boring. The whole thing is at least 5 times less exciting than Seasons In The Abyss but 9 times out of 10 I will reach for my copy of Reign In Blood. Hats off to Slayer for "Psychopathy Red" though. That song is pretty awesome.

Baroness- Blue Record. Awesome album art. Didn't know what the big deal was about these guys. Picked this up along with the Red Album. It's all pretty good, but I need more time to let this sink in. That's two albums worth of Allman Bros meets Rush style progressive stuff... in other words, a lot to take in. SO far, I think Blue is a better record because the drum sound is nicer and there are egg yolks on that girl's tits on the cover of Blue. Clearly an improvement over the last one.

Converge- Axe To Fall. No surprises here. Just another raw, dirty sounding batch of hardcore jams from reliable Converge. Catchy, brutal, technical in the right places. I can't even recall a moment on the album that resorted to the standard breakdown thing either. Just straight up blistering metallic hardcore. One of the softer moments, "Cruel Bloom" (with Steve Von Till) is pretty great. This album didn't blow my mind, but it was kinda comforting to put it on and not be disappointed by some tired sounding bullshit. It seems to me that Converge can make solid albums like this in their fucking sleep.

Them Crooked Vultures- Self Titled. I gotta be honest, no matter how much I listen to this album, it still sounds like just another Queens Of The Stoneage record to me. It sounds like a Queens album, but with John Paul Jones and Dave Grohl as the rhythm section. The end result is nothing to sneeze at. At first, I didn't find any of it very memorable at all. It was downright disappointing. But it has been growing on me. There are some moments here and there that hint at the greatness within Them Crooked Vultures' ranks, for example, the funky keyboard part in "Scumbag Blues" that comes in under the solo reminds me a lot of "Trampled Under Foot". "Reptiles" is an awesome example of the kind of authority that Dave Grohl is capable of wielding with a simple 4/4 drum beat. John Bonham comes to mind in moments like these but I think Grohl had been channeling Bonzo for a long while before he had the opportunity to work with Mr. Jones. Overall I think this is one of those albums that takes a while to get to you, or simply fades away and takes up space on the shelf with the rest of my cd's. Only time will tell I guess.

Propagandhi- Supporting Caste. I am a relatively recent convert to the school of Propagandhi thanks to a good friend of mine sending me a copy of Potemkin City Limits. (thanks again man). Supporting Caste is an amazing album. There just doesn't seem to be too many bands or albums out there right now that can reach such a wide spectrum of people. Supporting Caste does just that. Fuckin eh.

Doom (MF Doom)- Born Like This. North America doesn't know how close they came to a bloody, horrifying uprising of angry sons-of-bitches wielding any weapon they could get their hands on (2 words- FIRE AXE) JUST TO STOP THIS AUTO-TUNE BULLSHIT. Yes, I am a hater. My hate makes me a righteous man and this shit has to stop. Jay-Z released a shitty song called D.O.A (Death Of Auto-tune) which was of little consolation to anyone with even a slightly burning rage aimed at these talentless jokers... Thanks for the effort Jigga man, but where the fuck are those guns you claim to be packing? The only thing that makes me madder than all these assholes making such unbelievably bad music is the millions that are buying into it all. Ya know how they say there's no accounting for taste? I'd like to believe that but there's this thing in my gut telling me that I am right. It's also telling me, every time i hear anything that is currently wiping it's ass on the Hip Hop flag, that I need to be sick. At least we have ol' Metal Fingers to put out a record that sounds fresh but also sounds like a throwback. Lets make an important distinction here: Born Like This isn't a great record because it's being stacked up against the rest of the garbage in 2009... it's a great record because Doom is a superior rapper, a superior beat-maker, and there is a Charles Bukowski sample on the title track. A diamond on a pile of shit is still a fucking diamond.

Brutal Truth- Evolution Through Revolution. This year, I got a brand new album by my favorite grinders Brutal Truth and I got to see them kill it live twice. Aside from the fact that I got married this year, 2009 will be memorable for these reasons, man.

16- Bridges To Burn. This album starts off promising. The music is pretty heavy. But the vocals get old fast and the lyrics are really bad. I personally prefer Helmet or the Unsane a lot more.

Burnt By The Sun- Heart Of Darkness. I've spent a lot of time loving this band. It sucked when they called it quits. So another album from them, even knowing it will be the last, is a gift, really. It fits snugly with the rest of their flawless catalog. Lets hope they really mean it and never try to get together again. To tarnish such a legacy would be a shame. Oh, and the riff at the beginning of "F-Unit" gets my vote as the heaviest riff of the year.

Moss- Tombs Of The Blind Drugged. When I am reading H.P Lovecraft stories on my way to work in the morning this album supplies the perfect soundtrack. If you're in the mood for some seriously slow doom, or something that sounds like it was recorded in a cave, this could be just the right thing for you. "Cthulhu fhtagn".

Yob- The Great Cessation. It's been a great year for the slower tempos. The Great Cessation is a really, really good album. I liked it the first time I heard it and it keeps getting better. Check it out if you have not already.

Alice In Chains- Black Gives Way To Blue. I was pretty surprised when this didn't really suck. It does not sound anything like Jerry Cantrell's 2 solo albums. Layne Staley was an essential part of the equation but this still sounds like Alice In Chains. Like Burnt By The Sun and Brutal Truth's albums this year, it was pretty cool to have another album from an important band of yesteryear(for me) see release and not suck or fuck with the legacy of their previously recorded works. Not an instant classic by any means, but still pretty cool from an old fan's perspective.

Isis- Wavering radiant. It's taken me forever to like this band. I've seen them live a few times and been pretty engaged by them but on record, not so much. But I'm kinda getting it now. The production on this album is pretty epic and reverbed out. I like that. Maybe I just needed to hear Isis with the right ears. "20 minutes/40 Years" helped me find those ears. What a great song. Wavering Radiant is a pretty good record, and it's opening me up to their earlier stuff a bit more now as well.

Lets not forget the Beatles remasters. Quite good. A new 7" and full length album from Montreal's weird blues garage-psych freaks DEVIL EYES deserves mention too. Endast have a new demo of 3 songs that really kicks ass, especially the song "Pray For Rain". The Fuck The Facts side of their split with Leng Tche is really good too. New Nymphets 7" is also really really good. While I'm at it please let me say that my cousin's band Luther Higgs have a demo that also is fucking great.

I still have yet to hear the Shrinebuilder album, but I haven't heard a negative word yet.

Pretty good year I suppose.
If you've read this whole thing, hats off to you.
Happy holidays,
Sean (w).

1986: This Argument Is Over.

2009-12-12T23:03:00.001-08:00

Among many a metal head the debate has raged for years. In 1986, two giants of Metal released genre defining albums. Metallica dropped "Master Of Puppets", heralded as a masterpiece of the genre, a seminal album that helped draw out the blueprint for Metal. Former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine and his revenge fantasy/band Megadeth released their second album "Peace Sells... but who's buying?" which also swept the metal world and helped to redefine the genre. Both albums made a huge impact and are, without a doubt, classic records. But which one is better?. This question has been the source of heated debates among headbangers probly since the hallowed year of 1986.

In '86, I was seven years old. I was really into hotwheels, the Dukes Of Hazard, my Skeletor action figure and listening to Tears For Fears in my Dad's car. I didn't know about Metallica or Megadeth until the early 90's, when both of these albums were the soundtrack to my fucking homework. Like so many punk-ass teenagers, these bands and these albums helped introduce me to a world of drunken awesomeness, which I have shared with my closest friends and both of my little brothers.

As a result of becoming a metal-head, I have heard friends argue about which album weighs in heavier in the history books on many occasions. I have read articles in reputable magazines on this very subject. Perhaps the attraction to this debate stems from the drama behind the music in this scenario... after all, Mustaine was driven to shred by his very public grudge against his former band mates in Metallica. I've heard it dissected in every way, but EVERYONE seems to be missing an essential part of the story here. Not only did the unholy year of 1986 spawn these two albums of seemingly infinite influence over legions of headbanging maniacs, but it also shat from it's infected womb the most unholy of records, a record which, simply by existing completely nullifies any relevance those other two records might have had. To listen to it for the first time or the ten thousandth time is to understand how fucking meaningless Metallica and Megadeth's efforts in the year of 1986 and forever after have been and will be.

Enter REIGN IN BLOOD. Slayer even made conscious efforts not to try to better this album after they released it to a terrified world in that monumental year. It's as if any convention or technique utilized in Metal was honed, sharpened, and wielded upon the listener with more force and malice than is describable with words. Other musical devices, like melody or pretty chords or the off switch on the clean channels of their amps, were callously tossed to the wayside like the dead weight that they are. These are only hindrances to the pure efficiency and unrelenting malevolence of Slayer's sound. On Reign In Blood the genre of Metal was advanced by leaps and bounds by the pure visceral nature of the music. Slayer boiled down the essence of what Metal was, and shaped the remains into Reign In Blood.

Faster, more technically proficient, more aggressive and generally much more hateful and dark than anything a Hetfield or Mustaine could ever conceive, Reign In Blood helped Father further explorations into the extreme nature of metal, like Grindcore and Death Metal. And even though many others have taken the music to faster or maybe even darker places, there is something about Reign In Blood that endures. Even by today's standards, the album is impossibly fast and aggressive. And it doesn't sound dated, unlike the two aforementioned "classic" albums. It still annoys people with tender sensibilities (i.e. the modern day Metallica fan). It still incites violence. Songs from this album still cause people to be fucking murderous in the pit, as my little brother Big James will tell you... a Slayer pit is the only place his large frame has ever managed to BODY SURF (if you know James you know this is no small feat). It still holds up.

I got to Slayer late in life. I was 18 or 19. I bought Reign In Blood from a second hand store, and it changed my life. I did not know that the lead off track, "Angel Of Death" was the ultimate metal song. Nobody had told me. But, when I heard it, I knew. There are songs on Reign In Blood that are faster, more brutal... ("Jesus Saves" or "Necrophobic" come to mind) but from the outset, I knew instinctively that "Angel Of Death" was the real dose. That scream at the start of the song sets the machine in motion and the only thing that can stop it is that fucking thunder clap at the very end of the chaos in the last track, "Raining Blood". The only way to start an album like Reign In Blood is with a song depicting the horrors of the holocaust. It sets the stage. In concert, if Slayer were to start a set with "Angel Of Death", people would die en masse every night. They need to play it last in order to tire out the bloodthirsty fans just enough to keep them from re-enacting the words on each other. I actually thought I was going to be crushed to death as they played that song at the very end of the show a few years back. The length of the song was the only mercy shown to me.

I think that had I heard about Slayer and especially Reign In Blood before I had heard Metallica and Megadeth, I probly would have dispensed with those other bands altogether. I still listen to those other 2 records from 1986 as a form of nostalgia. They remind me of key moments in my life. When I need to hear something completely uncompromising, something to turn off the "rational human being" button in my brain, I put on Reign In Blood, the greatest Metal album of 1986 or any year thereafter.

Horns.
S. (w)

As a side note, in 2009, all three of the bands mentioned here released much anticipated albums. Metallica fans were thrown a meager bone (Death Magnetic is Diet Metal) as a reward for "sticking with them" through 20 years of increasingly watered down cash grabs which they called albums. Megadeth fans also have had to deal with inconsistent releases (I'm being nice) over the years but I'm told Endgame is alright. In any case, World Painted Blood destroys anything I've heard from recent Metallica and Megadeth. Even at their most predictable or boring at times in the last 20 years, Slayer has released albums that never lost sight of the aggression or fury of Metal. They never pandered for a buck, a la Risk or Load/Reload. The proof is in the pudding...

Sad Parade Of Yesterdays

2009-12-10T17:43:00.000-08:00

My band, The Great Sabatini, has completed work on our first full length album, entitled "Sad Parade Of Yesterdays". You can hear some selections from it, and/or order your own copy (on cd) at our myspace page.

At the end of November 2009, roughly a year after we began recording sessions for the album, we "released" the finished album with a listening party on a friday evening at Sound Central, my favorite underground record store in Montreal. The next night was the record launch at the new Katacombes with Squalor, Authors and Hey Sugar! opening the show for us. As a first time really kinda headlining a local show it went pretty well. The whole weekend went amazing actually, and I want to thank everyone who came out as well as the bands who played. Big thank yooz to Shawn and Costa from Sound Central as well as Dave and JF for promoting the show for us.

As for the record itself, it took a year to fully come together but I'm psyched that it is finally done. It is chocked full of black fucking magick. The whole album was more of a giant, messy collaboration between 6 people rather than a band thing. 2008 was a touring year for us and in our travels the songs were played by founding member Will Sabatini and then later by current drummer Steve Sabatini while Will was away in Europe. The songs were also demoed on a few occasions live to 8 track by my esteemed cousin Dustin, so we all had our own experiences with the songs throughout the year. It seemed important to us that Will and Steve both get the chance to leave their own respective marks on the record. Both of them gave the jams their own spin on stage so it made sense that the record document this as well. Dustin suggested that we approach the album from multiple angles, production-wise. This also made sense to us because each song is a different animal in the zoo. Why bother producing each song with the same techniques and approaches? We thought we could make a more interesting and engaging record this way.

Making the record was great cos there was no ego trips or hangups with anyone. We all just wanted to make the best album we could make. Having two drummers on the album was a blessing. Both Will and Steve even worked together on a couple songs. We gave pretty much all of the control over to Dustin for the mixing of the album. It took a while but the results were everything we expected and more. I flew to Nashville for the mastering (done by Steve Austin) and destroyed my ears listening to the finished album in his studio. From an artistic standpoint I've never felt so rewarded with the end result of something I've been a part of.

The artwork took a while to put together but I'm pretty satisfied with that as well. I started work on the art very early on, but of course all the big changes and finishing touches took place in the 11th hour. Our initial plan was to put it together for a vinyl release first but the length of the album (around 53 minutes) inhibited us from doing so. I don't want to put out something that sounds sub par so we'll wait till we can afford to put this album on two 12" discs or till some label tells us they'd like to put it out on vinyl for us. In the meantime, we are releasing it on cd independently on an imprint we are calling Sludge Hummer. We're working on making it available in as many places as possible but for the moment you can get it from our myspace page or directly from cdbaby. It'll be available in digital format shortly as well, on websites like itunes.

Steve Sabatini put together a video of our time in the studio. Check it out.
Thank you and good night.
S. (w)

hero sandwitch

2009-12-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

The Thinking man's Idiot blog has been dead as Dillinger for a while now. I started it, and then abandoned it like a mutant child. I will in fact be posting some randomness here more often... life has been busy but the desire to put my drop in the blog ocean has been building in my mind, somewhere in the hidden chambers guarded by the mighty Procrastinatron.
S. (W)

First Post/Self Portrait

2008-07-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is the first post here on my blog page. I will be putting up a ton of my art work as well as some music downloads (related to projects I'm involved with), writings and the occasional link to something I might find cool... but this page is mostly for my drawings, paintings and visual art related stuff. Please check back regularly for new art or send me a message if you need some kind of artwork done.

I recently dug out this painting I made in 2000, while attending Dawson College. There was a charity event where artists in attendance had to produce a painting in 2 or 3 hours and then they were all auctioned off for a cancer charity or something like that. The only evidence of this painting today is a print-out from a digital photograph that someone took of my painting. I scanned it and here it is.

W.