BALLPEIN

So this was a little bit of a surprise for me I recently met a thoroughly decent chap at work called Ged Ward (Pictured above 2nd from left) after working with him first time we discovered we had both grown up through the same musical scenes and we both shared a vast knowledge of old school Hardcore/Death Metal & Grind etc and knew a lot of the same people from the late 80's/early 90's scene  so we eventually got talking about bands we'd been in and Ged told me he had played bass in a band called Ballpein with another recent friend of mine Piggy (Dr Aids, Bonded By Bundy Pictured above far left) but he only had some blown out sounding live vids on youtube to play me but what they were doing sounded really good, he said there had been a demo done by the band and wanting to hear it i tried to help him source it through facebook then lo and behold their ex Guitarist just one day decided to upload all 4 tracks from the demo as youtube videos!

So Being the trainspotter geek i am I took these vids and ripped the music from them tagged them up etc and here I present for you the lost Hardcore gem that is the Ballpein demo! Now first off bear in mind these 4 tracks were taken from an old tape ripped to mp3 uploaded to youtube then ripped back to audio by me sorted out and uploaded! So considering the journey these files have done they have come out prettty good quality! Onto the music considering these tracks are from 1999 they sound surprisingly contemporary whilst still retaining a feel of the scene at the time what surprises me is that these guys were not given way more attention then because this is really tight and well played stuff all the way and they have managed to combine a range of influences from different underground styles and blend them together into a cohesive sound without the sound getting messy or overly complicated! This demo would definitely fall into the Hardcore category but I hear a lot of classic Death metal in some of the riffs particularly the intro riff to "Kurten"  and the middle 8 of "Unstable" which are straight out of the Autopsy school of riffage!

Overall the sound mainly feels like a blend of Death/Thrash riffage with the heaviest and best of NYHC and being honest I would never have pegged this band as British if I hadn't known beforehand! There's some great little flourishes on the demo too that are right off the wall but fit in with the sound perfectly for example the funky bass runs at the end of "Unstable" and the nice bass and guitar intro to "Low Life Cleansin" which kinda spin you upward towards the fast part! They have a good handle on their pace as well it's not all fast fast fast and the drummer uses a variety of beats not just sticking to the 1-2-1-2 hardcore beat giving plenty of room for the chunky fat breakdowns there's also good variety to the vocals there's growling, screaming, shouting (provided by both Ged & Piggy) and even a bit of that nasally sorta vocal you'd hear from proper old school hardcore bands  like Sick Of It All or Straight Ahead!

All in all this short demo really is a lost gem I was really surprised by how good it actually is! Generally you would feel obligated to tell a friend that their band/project was good even if it wasn't!! This is definitely not the case with me here! If someone had got these guys into a decent studio with someone who knows how to record this kind of music I have no doubt the end results would have utterly destroyed as it is this demo is all that remains of this band, Go check it out it's well worth 10 minutes of your time!

BALLPEIN DEMO - Mediafire

And you can find some live videos of the band in action HERE

Burning Ripper Leather Metal!!!!

So I have never made a secret of my love of 70's rock but this is not a new thing to me my first musical love at the age of 11 was heavy metal the 80's was a great time to love metal and I utterly worshipped bands like AC/DC, Kiss, Motorhead, Sabbath, Twisted Sister, Saxon etc etc that was until one summer i discovered Punk and the rest is history!!!

There is a reason that in it's formative years that it was called Punk ROCK now as dismissive and sneering as the original punk rockers may have been towards the old guard of stadium rock dinosaurs one listen to any classics by The Damned or even something as contemporary crust punk as the last couple of Disfear albums and you would find as much rock as you will punk. and over the years we have had many hybrids of punk and metal/rock etc but there's always been a sort of "shame" of having a love of heavy metal if you're serious about your punk! However one band have always been the exception to this rule and still to this day are worshipped by many punks myself included and that would be MOTORHEAD!!!! And this is where this post comes in here I present 2 albums I have discovered recently that feature some veteran players from the crust and punk scenes that are 100% unashamedely balls out fucking ROCK! let me begin....

First up we have Burning Leather this band features people who have played/play in such crust heavyweights as Detestation, Hellshock, Atrocious Madness, Nux Vomica, and Fall Of The Bastards to name just a few and their album being mastered by Brad Boatright of From Ashes Rise/Audiosiege fame you'd think with a pedigree like that you'd expect some fucking heavy distortion driven crust brutality right? WRONG! and you couldn't be more wrong.

I just got onto this band this week when researching some info on Hellshock and even though the name was a dead giveaway I went ahead and searched for it and managed to come up with a download of their one and only album "Daylight Nights" (Actually their 6 track demo and 4 new songs, they have also done 2 split 7"'s one with Japanese metalpunkers G.A.T.E.S. and another with The Slowmotions but i haven't sourced them yet also worth noting is that the Japanese label that released this album is called (wait for it....) Under the Surface!!!) Although I had expected some metal madness cos of the name of the band and album I was totally unprepared for the sheer unashamed rocking nature of this music! This is Heavy Metal plain and simple albeit in the finest tradition with more than a slight hint of Motorhead! Don't go downloading this expecting to be blown away by some punk influenced metal this is Rock 'N' Roll pure and simple. just one look at the tracklist should give you an idea where this band are coming from with track titles like "Wasted Days" & "In The Moonlight" plants these guys squarely in the rock camp! However that being said I can assure you nothing i have said so far is meant in any kind of negative way this is great fun music first and foremost. There's 12 bar boogies, lightning fast guitar solos and sleazy chugging rifferama by the bucketload throughout this album and the musicianship of this band is more than impressive it may have a reputation for being dumb music but if you wanna play rock/metal you better be able to play folks and these guys certainly can wail!!! I can tell you right now after repeated listens this album left me with a huge shit eating grin from ear to ear I cannot urge you to check this out soon enough it's good time, old school fucking rock with Motorhead written all over it and at the risk of repeating myself even more it's above all great fun! Go get this album now and fucking windmill (or if you're hairless like me do some serious Beard Bangin!!)

Daylight Nights - Mediafire

So next up staying in Portland (Like I've said about Sweden WTF?? what is going on in Portland man it's a godamn hotbed of awesome music!) We have Ripper, this band features members of bands that I haven't heard of but judging by what I've seen of their other bands releases these guys have their roots in crust/punk as well, discogs.com has these listed as "Hardcore Punk" which is seriously deluded of the writer or the writer is some punker who is just trying to justify their love for this album!  Like Burning Leather this album here "Into Oblivion" is another Heavy Metal gem! However in this case the production and sound is way dirtier,meaner and nastier than Burning Leather and the Motorhead influence is far more prevalent here however one look at the tracklist will leave you with no doubt about their metal credentials tracks like opener "Burning Up The Night" & "Soldier Of Fortune" again squarely put these guys in the metal camp. As I've said the production on this album is far rawer than Burning Leather but whether that is due to this being a vinyl rip I don't know but it doesn't detract from the music one bit. Theres chunky riffs and fast guitar runs aplenty backed up by drums straight out of the Philthy Animal school of kit annihilation! These guys are definitely wearing their influence on their sleeve no question but I would hesitate to dismiss them as mere clones as if you look through the obvious Motorhead influence you will find some serious rocking moments on this album and again it just makes me wanna don some denim and leather throw horns and bang my beard ha ha! again i can't urge you enough to download this as again this album also leaves me with a big smile on my face and is also great fun whilst kicking you squarely in the pants!

Into Oblivion - http://www.mediafire.com/download/cizsqouuvcs4qa9/Ripper.rar

So there ya go folks some rock 'n' roll madness for ya I want to say don't let my descriptions scare you these albums are both just great music and deserve to be heard by more people if i could lay my hands on originals of these on CD i would not hesitate for a second! Put some metal back into your life go and download these and feel yourself start to grin before you've even realised how awesome these bands are! Hey I wouldn't waste the space or my time (or yours) posting this to poke fun or if i didn't really like these bands? Utterly brilliant stuff!

Death Evocation

So once again this was a band i discovered through Matt from Auralskit posting up a youtube video which caused quite a stir with me and my crust loving fb friends! What we have here is a band i have never heard of have no idea who's in but are right up my Sacrilege loving street, I can tell you nowt here except this EP is from 2011 has 3 tracks on it and is utterly blistering metallic crust in the vein of classic Sacrilege (see my post on them HERE), Versklaven (see my post on them HERE)  & After The Bombs (see my post on them HERE) There's no info on the net and I had to trainspot like a bastard to find a download of it so I've re-upped it here so there's now at the least 2 links to it up here! They do have a facebook page but both me and Matt posted to them on there and no reply at all so it's all a bit mysterious. However at least I have uncovered this utter gem of an EP for you guys and the rest of the internet! There's 3 tracks of well played, heavy, female vocalled, metallic crust with a very slight stoner edge on there clocking in at 12 minutes and  the 6 min "Relentless" is just JAW DROPPING!

I cannot urge you to download this EP enough it is shockingly fucking good and why these guys only came to my attention now after the EP being out 2 years is a mystery! But I'm glad i got onto it now go download this RIGHT NOW If you like any of the bands I mention above there is no doubt in my mind you will soon have this EP on heavy rotation!

Death Evocation EP - Mediafire