Playing at Birdys September 23rd, the band has entertained this city almost half a dozen times. Bassist Tim Farr compliments on how accepting the Midwest and especially the city of Indianapolis has been for the band. It’s been a crucial element to how well the band has been thriving.

“Most people from New York doing even know we are from New York because we tour so much.”

Although not knew to life as musicians, the band members  — vocals and guitarist Mario Santana, guitarist Adrian Granada, drummer Scott Eisenberg, and Farr — met up a year ago and came together to focus on Finding Fiction.

As soon as they spent a couple nights jamming, they hit the ground running and immediately began to tour around the country.

“We started touring before we even played a show in New York,” said Farr. “We think of ourselves as a national band before we do a local band.”

And not that they shun their home town, it’s just that the opportunity to tour with friends presented itself and they acted on the opportunity. For the band, this was a formula that worked. With the philosophy to think like a national act from the beginning, it helped push them to get their latest release Idaho By The Sea into the mainstream.

Breaking conventional thinking, Finding Fiction continued with unconventional practices and decided to record the album while on tour, despite making an album first and then touring.

“With touring, by the time you get to the studio, you are already tight and know the songs like the back of your hand,” said Farr.

Santana spent some time in the past doing some songwriting for various Nashville musicians and had experience in the Tennessee capital. It was a natural selection to take some time off in the middle of a tour to record the album there.

“The experience was still new to us, but looking back at it, the experience felt natural,” he said.

The output of Idaho By The Sea is exactly what they had hoped for, an album that is full of expression and representative of the band as journeymen. From the opener, “I’ll Buy” and the forward-moving modern rock sound that does not get trapped in the past to the haunting “Big Blue Sky” with the beautiful yet sobering guitar melodies, the band never feels stagnant.

“The songs were first written for a live setting,” said Farr. “It was very easy for us to adapt either way”

And if you ask them what is the greatest reward, they will tell you that they did it their way. A DIY ethic is very important to their existence and how the band functions. With hundreds of shows, self-releasing Idaho By The Sea, and maintaining a strong Internet presence,  it all feels like an organic process to their existence.

Catch them live while you can because after this round of shows, the band plans to take a little time off and re-focus their energy on a more local level.

“We have been talking about making a conscious effort to play more in New York City,” said Farr. “We have a great hold on touring and now we want to get a grasp on playing around the city and spending time rehearsing.”

You can keep up with the band at the following websites:

Official Site: http://www.findingfiction.net/

MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/findingfiction
RockitBomb’s Interview on Finding Fiction: http://brianwyrick.com/finding-fiction/ | http://brianwyrick.com/finding-fiction-live-video-from-luna-music/

As Tall As Lions returns with an album that is so rich in musical flavor, it’s unreal. Taking three years from their sophomore self-titled release, the band has re-discovered a certain degree of grit to their songs. You Can’t Take It With You builds a bond between the humanistic nature of the group and one exceptional studio recording.

From the opener “Circles,” it not only gives us an idea of where they left off, but sets us up with what is to be expected from the majority of this album — gripping power rock expressionism that will simply blow you away.

The Beach Boys-like harmony — if the Beach Boys listened to Lenny Kravitz’ Are You Gonna Go My Way — blends flawlessly with Daniel Nigro’s rich vocal range to create a wide landscape of musical vérité.

“In Case Of Rapture” feeds off of a brooding drum beat and wailing Nigro wrapped around guitar feedback. “Duermerte” is a beautiful ballad that rubs like silk. Then there is the title track that is a seductive adventure of expensive cologne and Hollywood hills designer one-night stands. But As Tall As Lions are from New York City, and the city is as much a cause as it is an effect.

Even though the closing songs are more exploratory than the beginning, drifting away from the overall theme the band establishes, this is the way an indie rock album should be – full of life and expression with a solid sound.

As Tall As Lions

Since forming sometime around 2006, the band has had some twists and turns in their career, and Technicolor Health captures the essence of these times, both for better or worse. A lot of factors went into the making this album, including a mixture of collaborators from Beirut to Antibalas, Arcade Fire to Beyondo. But when it comes down to it, it’s the bonding of the five members (Vocalist Lexy Benaim sheds some light on their highly interesting and ever-so-colorful new release.

Andrew Duncan: Technicolor Health feels more upbeat than your self-titled release. What led to this direction for the band and was it intentional or luck that the album now seems like an act of survival and even defiance during these struggling economic and social times that surround us? Can you go into the personal struggle of the band during this time to what became the output? How do you feel this album will reflect to what people are facing?

Lexy Benaim: I think it was intentional. It’s a highly social album in my opinion. Very much outwardly engaged as the entire band was during recording. Well, the personal struggle was just coming up with something that we could all sign off on. We’re five quite different dudes. But I think putting the music through this sifter really allows for some strong music to emerge–I hope. But it’s also a sometimes painful trial and error process. I can’t say how it will reflect what people are facing. That’s such a personal thing, you know. People face things in such unique ways, and I imagine will respond to the record in similarly particular ways.

Duncan: Technicolor Health is also more expansive of a release than before. Can you tell me about the ideas that led up to the creation of the album and what led to expansively rich songs and what feels like a powerful vitality that stems from the pop elements of the songs?

Benaim: I’d say the idea was kind of making hopeful, strong music that in some ways, harkened back to the early-mid 90′s, when Clinton prosperity was beginning to bloom.

Duncan: There is a lot of depth and diversity especially with the amount of instrument hooks and effects, can you tell me about some of the creative processes that became Technicolor Health?

Benaim: There was a lot of lonely lyric and structure time in my eldest brother’s apartment while he was at work. There was a lot of time spent with the band hashing out ideas and tweaking and sculpting; passionate attention to detail from several different angles.

Duncan: With an album like this, how has it transferred to a live stage?

Benaim: It’s been a blast actually. We’ve incorporated samplers and a drum machine, which Brent basically just plays on stage as if it were an acoustic instrument. 

Duncan: What were your biggest challenges recording an album like this? What
were the greatest accomplishments that stood out?

Benaim: The hardest part was achieving the consensus. Hmm…I like to think of it as a whole, a sort of a chain-link, and any one accomplishment hinges on the one before it and the next…so it’s hard for me to think of it like that. That said, “Niagara Falls” is probably my favorite song from the album. 

Duncan: What aspects of pop music appeals to you the most? What attracts you to them as a resource and style of the band?

Benaim: I’d say the immediacy and the comfort of it.  

Duncan: It feels like there is no space wasted with something always going on within each song and very little disconnect between. Was this something intentional to build a connection throughout the album by almost treating it as a single statement instead of individual songs? 

Benaim: Absolutely. We wanted to make an old-fashioned album rather than bow to the current singles-oriented trend. That trend is fine, but we wanted to hold down the old-fashioned fort.

Duncan: How does this album relate to New York City? How does New York City relate to you?

Benaim: The city continually relates to anyone who lives there. It’s just so vast and sort of intrusive. There are a million stimuli and distractions.  Certain sounds on the album are just echoes of things we hear on the streets–mainly Latin radio. 

Duncan: Do you see the band continuing the tradition of music making in this fashion or is Technicolor Health a statement of “a moment” from the band? How do you want this album to be looked at down the road?

Benaim: I think our next record will be the same in that it will be poppy and ambitious, but other than that, I don’t know. I just hope the album is still looked at at all down the road.

Duncan: Optimists or Realists? Or a bit of both? Based on where you are now as a band, how would you describe yourself philosophically?

Benaim: I’d say willful optimists. Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will. I wouldn’t describe myself philosophically, except maybe to say I read a good deal of William James. 

Harlem Shakes

There is a degree of poetic justice that comes from the song “Please Send Love.”  It’s a song that defines a post-modern sexual revolution, like art house sterility in a dirty mid-town environment. The bass thrusting, Stephonik X’s gasps and groans accentuated by some brush strokes of guitar noise powered by an echo pedal. Everything about that song screams orgies of rabid sexual desire and a song that imitates the after effect of fingernail imprints on metal.

If teenage sexual rebellion transpired directly from the way it was in the ‘50s and ‘60s with films like Mondo Teeno and Kitten With A Whip, then this song along with Tora Tora Torance! “Hottest Pants” or Sunshine’s “Vampire’s Dance Hall” — both songs explicitly blatant about it’s sexual energy — would be perfect for a 21st century sexploitation soundtrack.

This all sounds wonderful, right? Pair that up with ZZZ’s “Ecstasy” and you have yourself a wild night of hair pulling and teeth biting. However, instead of keeping this level of pleasure, a majority of this album is just noisy art rock fodder wrapped around Stephonik X’s exclamations over even more echo effects. And it gets really annoying when she does that at the beginning of practically every single song, like a kid who cannot sit still and has to walk in circles while blabbering incessant nonsense.

Trying to wrap their minds around the avant garde and blur lines between the noise scene and the New York art rock scene (think Liars and Black Dice), the band ends up not knowing exactly where they exist. And if the first two songs does not immediately turn you off, then you are lucky because that brings us back to the beginning and the diamond in the rough.

But then it reverts to anything pleasurable. It could be Stephonik X’s vocals in the situation of contortioned guitar fuzz feedback, but when it comes to songs like “Action!,” It’s a hard sell when bands like Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower does it so much better.

But before you reach for your coat, there is one last song that reminds us what this band should have been all along. “There As It Bleeds” is an epileptic fit of music if it was behind police tape at a homicide. This is where it should have ended, but they manage to squeak out a few more forgettable tunes before they are done with it all.

Cross-Reference: At The Drive In, The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower, The Fire Show

Even though William Parker has had some well-acclaimed releases in the jazz field (Piercing The Veil, Mayor of Punkville, and Peach Orchard), the Thirsty Ear label is highly responsible for shoving the jazz bassist out into the mainstream as much as allowing him free range to continue expanding his thoughts into sound. Joining the label as part of the Blue Series, which still exists as an entity to this day, William Parker brought his sometimes moody and often times eclectic jazz compositions to the forefront of the series with two prominent releases (Painter’s Spring was the other).

The focus of the Blue Series was a concept to “marry jazz’s many languages into a cogent new one and perhaps shake up what was, and to a certain extent still is, a stagnant musical climate.” (from the official website: http://www.thirstyear.com/about_and_contact.php).

However, instead of a vast degree of experimentalism, Parker does quite the opposite. What may be one of his most accessible releases is also one of his more uneventful ones. A piece of work that had much promise, simply does not live up to its potential.

The album starts out with this great be-bop tune called “Hunk Pappa Blues.” It’s a cross between this bouncing Mingus style and a delicate Gillespie approach that balances out into a colorful palette of horns and rhythms. The song finally meanders into various soloing, but eventually comes back into focus towards the end. And you really feel that Parker is on to something, which he is.

But Parker tries out something that he has wanted to do since the ‘70s, and that is adding on vocals, an experiment that wanes little results. According to an interview with Jazz Weekly, Parker has always written music with the intention of words to co-exist within the music (http://www.jazzweekly.com/interviews/wparker.htm). And with Raining On The Moon, he did a role reversal to the avant-pop style. Avant-pop takes accessibility in popular culture and turns reality upside down with the influence of popular culture icons. Here, Parker has taken an experimental career and creates something accessible from it.

If you examine the quartet that backs Parker up on this album and who also surrounded one of his more impressive works, O Neal’s Porch, featuring Rob Brown (alto sax), Lewis Barnes (trumpet), and Hamid Drake (drummer/percusionist), you have an interesting blend of talent and style. Add vocalist Leena Conquest to the mix, and you have a flow of songs that run both hot and cold.

On “Song Of Hope,” Conquest uses a form of reinforced poetry that quickly re-evaluates the point of the message over and over again. However, instead of positive re-enforcement, as it should, it ends up feeling frantic and paranoic instead of relaxed.

Coming to her defense though, the song “Watermelon Song” puts Conquest in a better light. Incorporating the simple black folk art style into vocal story telling, this abbreviated jazz number is simple and elegant in a smoke-filled grouping of muted trumpets and softer tones.

The title track to the album is not only a personal statement to the essence of this release, but it is also the most complex, cutting a noche about 15 minutes deep. A more political and social statement than a science fiction-like perspective, Conquest contemplates a utopia-like scenario of peace and tranquility for the world, yet backs up her statements by stressing that it will rain on the moon before any of this happens. The horns dance around her words like vocals within themselves, sometimes falling into an argument between the two then coming back together in an agreement of terms. The longer the song drifts the more poignant Conquest becomes. It makes you wonder what Parker would have said in 2002 if someone told him that a black Senator from Illinois would be President in 2008. It would even be interesting to gauge his thoughts on the series of events today.

The album ends in a very brief experimental African folk song titled “Donso Ngoni,” a song named after the sacred and ceremonial Mali instrument which is a six-string harp. It is a beautiful sound to end a rather sporadic album that seems to try too hard to please everyone.

Cross-Reference: Alice Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor

Origin: New York City
Style: Metal, Industrial

Shortly after the release of La Sexorcisto (Devil Music, Volume 1), the band began to ride the wave of two hits: “Thunderkiss ’65” and “Black Sunshine.”

Instead of releasing a proper single by the band, White Zombie enlisted KMFDM to remix their money makers into one little EP.

First up is the “Swinging Lovers Mix” of “Thunderkiss ’65.” The remix stays pretty close to the original with some traditional KMFDM electronic dance sampling and a work up of Rob Zombie’s vocals. After that is the “Remix That Wouldn’t Die” version of the same song. It’s a remix that I wish would die. It strips out a lot of the groove metal that makes the song palatable while gushing with more Zombie vocals than need be. It’s enough “Thunderkiss” to make you swear off the song forever.

“Black Sunshine,” on the other hand, is spot on. Their “Indestructible ‘Sock It To Me’ Psycho-Head Mix” is a greased-up re-working of the song that turns the song more into a driving version than the smoke and black rubber streaks while on the verge of ultimate destruction original the band made. KMFDM complement this icon of a song with style.

However, the real charm of the EP is not the music what so ever. Sadly enough, it’s Rob Zombie’s artwork that adorn the cover.

Cross-Reference: Black Sabbath, Monster Magnet, Fu Manchu

Origin: New York City
Style: Hip Hop/Punk

The summer of 1992 was a period of transition. High school was becoming a distant memory, I was adjusting to university life, and the world was on a fast track away from the ideology of decadence to the practicality of non-practicality wrapped in flannel. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and the Northwest scene was exploding. Bands like Sonic Youth and Fugazi were adapting in their own way.

The Hip Hop kids were also changing. Disappearing from the limelight were Public Enemy and Run DMC, while new kids like Cypress Hill and Snoop Doggy Dogg were taking their place on top. It would not be long before a band like Rage Against The Machine would rebel against being told what to do. But as times changed, the Beastie Boys always seemed comfortable in a constant state of evolvement, as well as involvement.

Even though nothing could top the scope of Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head was a welcomed change in their career, especially one coming from a punk background and those that knew what their early New York days were like (Pollywog Stew).

Growing up alongside the Beastie Boys, it felt like they were growing up right along with you. With this album, the members pick back up their instruments and dive deeper into pop culture without sacrificing a lick of talent.

Unlike any of their other albums, Check Your Head gives us an aural history of a time in New York City when Bronx Hip Hop was fresh, and you could see punk rockers and b-boys hanging out side by side. Gone was the drinking and partying persona that shined like a metallic beer can on License To Ill. Gone was the recreational drug references on Paul’s Boutique. All of that paved the way for a more sobering release and the drive to get back to the basics of pure musicianship. When their friend Dave Scilken died in 1991 of a drug overdose, it shocked the band and gave them a wake-up call that made the three closer and stronger than ever.

Even at the release of this album Paul’s Boutique hadn’t completely sunk in to pop culture’s subconscious as “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” was still invading airwaves and various nightclubs. As with Paul’s Boutique and even more so with Check Your Head, change was imminent, and it appeared that the band did not care if the public kept up. And as most people had no clue of their punk past by being stuck in a License To Ill trapping, it was a refreshing surprise to hear the elements of Funk, Soul, Punk, and Hip Hop all come together.

Check Your Head did something to me no other album did. It made me want to explore beyond my immediate musical boundaries of Punk, Alternative, and Hip Hop culture. Continuing on this album, there is a maze of musical references that make the sampling as much a guessing game as it was trying to determine what Glenn Danzig was actually saying on a Misfits song. Sampling for this band was an homage to their influences. Fab Five Freddy, Ohio Players, Jimmie Walker, Kool and the Gang, Jimmie Smith — all were powerful forces that further accentuated the band’s roots. The way they incorporated them into the songs only breathed new life into the how obscure and not-so-obscure their taste was. It brought soul back to the white kid, it provided a hip hop history lesson, and it allowed people to accept Bob Dylan alongside Bad Brains or Ted Nugent with Venom.

Much like listening to The Clash’ London Calling and their immigration of reggae into white culture, Check Your Head was truly about change in a way that no other album could provide at the time.  Looking back, it was equally as much about a reaction from the album as it was the music.

Opening up new avenues in sound, it also opened up my vinyl collection, searching out new styles of music and trying to understand them. A trip to the record store would not be about rounding out a Black Flag collection, or picking up Minutemen albums or looking for some obscure Euro-alternative band, it was about checking out what Miles Davis was doing to jazz in the ‘70s or learning who The Jazz Messengers were, as well as getting your hands on a Lonnie Smith release or The Meters. It was exploring the rebels and diving into the essence of music history.

Instrumentals like “Groove Holmes” and “Pow” put things into perspective that explored the gritty essence of funk and soul that could be traced back to the black exploitation influence on film culture. The band has a light-hearted spirit when it comes to lyrics that almost border on absurd, but the deeper you look into it, the real meaning of their purpose becomes clear like when they blast into a punk frenzy of “Time For Livin’” and the pre- “Sabatoge” chart topper “Gratitude.”

New York hardcore had dissipated by 1992.  Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, Disco Biscuits – gone. So for the Beastie Boys to come out with these kinds of songs was a flip of the coin. The influenced became the influential.

I always felt that the album should have started with “The Blue Nun” as “Stand Together” is a more pungent statement about the album than “Jimmy James,” an overall feel-good song that only demonstrates the Beastie Boys are back and ready to show off on the mic, which is what “Pass The Mic” was all about, a better stand-out song than “Gratitude.” However, even “Pass The Mic” has its fault with Mike D making the mistake of rhyming the word “commercial” with, wait for it … “commercial.”

To round all of this up, fans of the band also got to experience their aura through their Grand Royal magazine, which helped in understanding where the band came from, and what they were musically thinking at the time as they wrote about people like Lee “Scratch” Perry or looked at things like graffiti culture. The band simply made the itch of finding impossible urban artifacts in suburban culture easier to find.

And more importantly, the Beastie Boys demonstrated that their fight was now heading toward a more positive direction, as further experienced in Ill Communication.

Check Your Head was not as bold as that of Paul’s Boutique, but it was a celebration of music and Hip Hop integration. At this point, the Beastie Boys could officially do anything they wanted.

Cross-Reference: Bad Brains, Afrika Bambaataa, Lonnie Smith

Origin: Brooklyn, New York
Style: Indie Rock/Electronic

Monica Rodriguez teeters on the line of aggression and late night bittersweetness. A vocalists who tries desperately to be a pop star in an indie rock shell, her voice carries so much confidence, you end up siding with her whether you acknowledge the music or not.

Instead of military regalia and braces, Rodriguez is PolyStyrene in an evening gown. Her bluntness slices like a knife as she growls out words like “I won’t keep wasting my time. Shut up and decide,” from the song “Decide.” It does not get more upfront than that.

Zigmat’s self-titled release is a nice combination of upbeat dance electronica and jittery indie rock that blend in well together. At first, the pop structure of “So Sure,” a song that could be easily found on an early morning VH1 video show, is a failed attempt at sounding Top 40, but when the chorus kicks in, the song veers away from the slow motion fabricated beat and into a more stabilized environment for the band.

When Rodriguez lets her guard down, she falters. This album sounds best at its angriest. That’s when the emotion explodes and we get the truest form of music this band can make. Sure she sounds an awful lot like Bjork in “Discosuave” and Karen O in “Glowstick” but most times she sounds like an ‘80s New Waver with nothing to lose. Not just the lyrics but the combination of spanish and english, helps Rodriguez create an identity for the band with a cross-cultural bond.

If this band wanted trendy then they wouldn’t be cutting themselves all over the place. And by the end of it all and a couple “spanglish” remixes of songs, the album as a whole is not too shabby.

Cross-Reference: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, VHS Or Beta, CSS

Origin: New York City
Style: Hip Hop

When James Brown recorded songs like “I’m Real” and the uber-pop patriotic “Livin’ In America,” the icon of super-soul sex machine shrunk down to a Top 40 garbage disposal. “Livin’ In America” bodes about as much instant gratification as Matthew Broderick lip syncing to The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout” on a parade float in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off while Chicagoans quickly transformed into a massive dance troupe and turned the Magnificent Mile into a choreographed reality. It was that point when James Brown and Eddie Murphy became synonymous and the sweat was no longer true grit.

And just like Afrika Bambaataa’s Dark Matter, this collection of songs is not, in essence, Bambaataa. The “Godfather of Soul” did not know how to quit. And with Bambaataa’s resurfacing, the “Godfather of Hip Hop” is falling into the same trap.

I’m not sure if this was as much a comeback as it was a reactionary response to the state of Hip Hop in 2004, which was a mixture of party anthems and explicatory ghettoisms, or if it was just a last-ditch attempt at keeping his head out of the water. With Hyrdraulic Funk being released in 2000 (no relation to P Funk’s album of the same title), it seemed like the ‘90s wore a hole in Bambaataa’s career, as the Hip Hop School of Positivity (A Tribe Called Quest, Arrested Development, De La Soul) was coming to an end. The Godfather of Hip Hop was becoming like his inspiration. Unfortunately for Bambaataa, none of these songs ever broke out, except maybe “Metal,” a song that turns Gary Numan into the modern-day Bing Crosby/Bowie as Bambaataa sings around Numan’s song. It’s a scene all too familiar, going back to transforming Kraftwerk into “Planet Rock.” The second time is not charm.

It’s a shame. “Got That Vibe” is a great opener for the band, shooting samples of electrical currents through the air waves that brings everyone together the Bambaataa way – positive universalism. But how many times can you say “Throw your ass on the floor” before it falls flat.

After that, the album switches from P Funk-style anthems to electro beats that try its hardest to mix feel-good breakbeats with anti-gang and drug messages. How effective it is may depend on the devout follower versus casual observer. If “Planet Rock” did not capture someone to be a fan, Dark Matter will not. When Bambaataa collaborated with the electronic group Leftfield to make “Afrika Shocks,” it’s not surprising that songs like “Soul Makossa” sounds the way it does, and veers completely away from the sound that Afrika Bambaataa practically invented.

And by the end, it seems like the band just gives up and let’s the DJ take over, defeating the message of a song like “No Dope Fiends On The Floor.”

Put your hands in tha aieeeeaairrrre! Yeah, we get the picture. Someone needs to tell them that party ended years ago.

Cross-Reference: James Brown, George Clinton, Leftfield

Origin: New York City
Style: Metal

To me, it’s still baffling that this band ever made anything of themselves. Could Rob Zombie have been such a visionary that he foresaw the future’s need to cherish the Drive-In and Grindhouse culture? Did he see the sights of many who would eventually grow up and want to pay homage to the childhood pop culture the ‘60s and ‘70s? It’s why they are bringing back things like The Banana Splits and The Electric Company. Unlike others who bask in the era, Zombie must have just listened to plain old cultural common sense because we all want to hang on to things of the past that are dear to us, even if that something is The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

During the transformation into the 1990s, a friend popped a crusty cassette into my car stereo with the words Make Them Die Slowly becoming a blur as it disappeared into the deck. Driving around the city on a hot, summer day, the sludge sound of White Zombie spewed out of my speakers. The recording was poor and the production was absolute crap. The drums sounded like cardboard boxes and the bass couldn’t have been muddier. You know, something Killdozer might have done, but actually bad. It could have been the cassette, but hell Sonic Youth’s Confusion Is Sex sounded better in my car. (For an example, here is “Acid Flesh” off of the Make Them Die Slowly album – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUsYkESA_yo)

Then came La Sexorcisto. The same friend, a huge White Zombie fan for 1992 standards being that no one still really heard of them — he even had the at-the-time rare “God Of Thunder” Kiss cover on vinyl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY52HHXPrxU) — tried once again to convert me. I wasn’t going to have it, citing my reasons which were immediately diffused by a his disclaimer that this was indeed a defining album, which is true. It did become a defining album not just for the band, but for the genre. The album reached double platinum status and also reached number 36 on the Billboard 200 for 1993.

The band moved from Caroline to Geffen who must have gave them a more-than-modest budget to create what is now considered their masterpiece, or what my nephew likes to call it the “Yeah!” album because of Rob Zombie’s excessive use of the word “yeah.” The production quality improved leaps and bounds, the mixing was a lot better, and peppered in the release was sample upon sample of B-movies, exploitation film dialogue, and an orgy of schlocky sound effects. It was a “Where’s Waldo” of the Something Weird archive. Now, you can easily get a menu of sample references from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Sexorcisto:_Devil_Music,_Vol._1).

I think half of the fun was sitting around, listening to the album, drinking beer, and trying to decipher what sample went to what movie. “That radio broadcast was from Night of the Living Dead.” “Did I hear a line from Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!?” The timing could not have been better, too. Before Tarantino gave us a re-envisioned view of the Grindhouse and exploitation genre, Something Weird was a cult phenomena, making available a plethora of grindhouse, sexploitation, horror, and other types of exploitation films on VHS. It was a charm to be able to watch Herschell Gordon Lewis films, Russ Meyer, Ray Dennis Steckler, Spiderbaby, and other films that influenced Rob Zombie which amplified the prominence of this album.

Sidetrack our way across 1992, and another musician was doing something similar in a much different way. Henry Rollins released The End of Silence as the Rollins Band. A significant and extremely heavy album of his career. What does he have to do with La Sexorcisto? Roughly the same time of both albums, the concept of the consecutive sludge chords guiding a groove rhythm became significant on both albums. You can hear it at the end of “Low Self Opinion” and you can hear it at the end of “Psychoholic Slag.” This sound became a trademark of early ‘90s grunge metal. Think the bane of existence for Helmet’s In The Meantime.

At a time when hardcore punk and metal crossed over, it was not surprising to hear someone like Iggy Pop voice the intro of the hit song “Black Sunshine” or the goth kids, pretending to be Peter Steele, eat up “I Am Legend.” La Sexorcisto was truly an universal album at the time.

And while many people consider the last half of the album less significant than the first half (http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=4973), I say listen again because the true jamming begins with “Thrust!” And the song just feels like it stretches on and on. “Starface” ups the ante like a reprisal to the album. But what I think is completely misunderstood is the finale “Warp Asylum” and the slowed down, chunky hip grinder. But then it transforms into this rolling jam, while transforming one more time into an out of control spiral of guitar solos and smoked-out rhythms.

It showed what guts the band had to be able to wiggle their way on to a major label while still being able to do things their own way and succeed in that gamble. And now look at Zombie and how he saw his vision through for better and for worse.

Cross-Reference: Helmet, Rollins Band, Powerman 5000