ISSUE #2, December 21, 2001
  
  
RUSH LIMBAUGH IS A DEAF RICH IDIOT, AND OTHER OBSERVATIONS The "conservative" media has gotten under my skin more after the September 11 bombings than ever before. Every right-wing talk show host keeps on focusing on Bill Clinton, for example, and most of them exalt George Bush, Jr. to such an extent that most of the talk-show hosts aren't even critical of the guy. Rush Limbaugh, for example, keeps on "criticizing" the Bush administration for trying to be bipartisan to them evil Democrats (because, of course, this is talk radio and anybody with a differing viewpoint than the host is as evil as sin), but can't exalt the guy enough for how he's handling the war on terrorism. Just yesterday (at least, yesterday as I write this), most of the talk radio hosts I was listening to were congratulating Israel on bombing PLO headquarters, which I felt was a knee-jerk reaction to the murder of Israelis on the Gaza Strip last weekend. These, I think, are oversimple responses to what, in reality, is a difficult situation that has been going on between the PLO and Israel ever since 1987. Then again, what do I know? Israelis good, Palestinians bad, Ariel Sharon is our hero, I guess. Rush Limbaugh is now totally deaf. It is now possible for anyone to stick his/her head out of his/her car and say, "HEY, RUSH! YOU SUCK!" without being fed "better-than-thou" propaganda from El Rushmo. Seriously, it hasn't stopped him one bit from espousing his moronic opinions about how stupid and opportunistic Democrats are, how Bill Clinton is still a big, leftist, nigger-loving, America-hating, opportunistic cancer on the face of society, and how he's going to be right that Americans are going to target Iraq next on the war on terrorism. I find Limbaugh listenable when he keeps his basic nature in check (i.e. when he's not talking about how Democrats have ruined his country), but he is still an ABC-paid shill for the "Republican" cause. Lately, he's been talking an awful lot about his hearing problems, the amount of work he does, and how he's going to get coclear ear implants to allow him to hear again (and how he's going to get them in the winter or springtime). First of all, Rush has a $250 million contract with ABC Radio and can afford coclear ear implants. Second of all, I don't consider influencing hordes of idiots, talking for three hours a day for five days a week, and shilling for the Republican Party "work." Finally, Rush's time has passed. 1992 is over, and Rush has been ineffective since 1999. Let his show die, and replace it with a bunch of static. I'd probably learn more from the static anyway. I think Ariel Sharon's bombing of PLO headquarters is a knee-jerk reaction to the PLO suicide bombings that happened over the weekend. There have been countless attacks like that over the years, some by Israelis, and some by Palestinians. I realize the PLO is funded by terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, but that's not the point. Israel could have attacked the PLO like this at any time prior to the present conflict. Why they waited until now to execute this attack (and after the United States government told him to exercise restraint in dealing with the Palestinians and the PLO) shows how opportunistic Sharon, a man with an immense hatred for the Palestine state, is. Hundreds of people have died since the 1970's in this conflict, but to tell me after countless decades that the PLO Must Pay just doesn't jibe. I recognize the fact that Israel must protect itself against its Arab neighbours, and the fact that the Palestinians, at least as recognized in the Bible, were the former oppressors of the Jewish peoples, but this sort of attack is akin to killing a fly with a machete. At the same time, Yassir Arafat is to blame for the terrorist attacks that happened in the Gaza Strip over the weekend. While I don't believe he is a terrorist (and there are lots of people out there who believe he is), he's allowed terrorism to infiltrate his organization to such an extent that it's running the PLO. I know, you're going to call me "anti-American" or "ill-informed" for my little opinion, but it's my opinion. You don't like it? Defect to the Taliban like Johnnie Walker, my Communist little friend. Is it just me, or is Digimon just Mighty Morphin Power Rangers with animals? That show irritates me like nothing else. What does it say about the show that the animals (oh, I'm sorry, the Digimon, whoops) do all the fighting, and all the trainers have to do is stand there and swipe cards to make them grow? At least on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (which is still on the air, a virtual Superfriends of the 1990s), the kids fight. Okay, they fight rather poorly, but they still fight. In my opinion, the person who created that show should have just made all the characters half-human, half-Digimon or something. Kids, watch Powerpuff Girls or Ripping Friends instead. Those shows rock. CNN's coverage of the "War on Terrorism" sucks eighteen flavours of ass. Just today (September 7, as I write this), CNN had a sort of round-table discussion on the subject of whether they can afford to be more objective in covering this war. Jesus fucking Franco, I want to see some reporting, and not another stupid round-table discussion about what the US strategies are about the "War on Terrorism." Opinion is okay once in a while, but I could give a shit about what anybody Lou Dobbs or Larry King interviews thinks about things. CBC Newsworld is infected with this kind of disease as well, which is a shame. The CBC used to be a good news organization before the Liberal government hacked the hell out of it in the 1990's. For good investigative reporting, I urge all of you reading this to watch BBC World (that is, if you have cable or satellite). Them's good reporting, y'all. Oh, and another thing, Christine Amanpour can go buttmunch my cornholio. My impression of MTV Canada: "Hi, I'm Canadian Carson Daly, here on TRL Ripoff. All right, the number seven song that YOU requested is by Crappy Rap Artist Bubba Doggxxx and ICE SKULPTA from the soundtrack to BLACK FEVER 'N THE HOOD! We have Bubba Doggxxx and Ice Skulpta here in the studio right now, yub yupp! Yo, word up, Bubba Doggxxx, how is it that you come up with the most BUMPING shizzit?" Bubba Doggxxx: "Yeah, you know, I gets th' beats, and like the rhymes come next, and you know all dis shit happens and like WOAH they's the shiznit! My black nigga homey Ice Skulpta, like he put down his gat long enuff fo' this track to happen, and he's always come up wit' the flava beats. Ain't that right, my nigga?" Ice Skulpta: "WHITEY DIIIIIE!!!!!" Canadian Carson Daly: "Hot muthafucka! Yo, here we a', Bubba Doggxxx and Ice Skulpta wit' 'Whiteys Have Gotta Die!'" Ice Skulpta: "KIIIIIIIIIILL WHITEY!!!!!!!!!!!!" Ha ha ha. The CBC technicians are on strike again. Now I have time to catch up to the paragon of funny that is the CBC Friday night comedy lineup, since the CBC will be airing reruns of Red Green nonstop for seven weeks, I'm sure. The average age of a CBC program has to be ten years old these days. Stockwell Day is trying to succeed himself as the leader of the Canadian Alliance. He is currently the leader of that fine party. He recently resigned as leader because of massive lack of confidence within his own party. Of course, why he's stupid enough to try to win back his own leadership, I don't know. The Canadian Alliance is the Canadian equivalent of Survivor. Everybody in that party hates one another's guts somehow. Would the Canadian Alliance have been this divisive if Preston Manning had remained party leader? Well, okay, they would have. Stupid redneck Albertans, this is all their fault. I guess they can't get off the bottle long enough to vote somebody other than their own people, bunch of hicks... I thought this "nü-metal" trend was going to be over by now. Apparently it's still going strong, as witnessed by the suck-cess of bands like Puddle of Mudd, Project Wyze and Staind. When I saw that Limp Bizkit was releasing a "best-of" album, I scratched my head. Uh, maybe it's just me, but three albums does not qualify any band to release a "best-of." Hell, half the songs on Limp Bizkit albums start off with "Introducing...THE CHOCOLATE STARFISH! AND THE HOT DOG FLAVOURED WATER!" and then go off with Fred Durst bitching about how he's better than Trent Reznor or how he thinks women are like robots. If there was ever a time we needed Beavis & Butthead, we need them now. Beavis & Butthead is the fucking Mystery Science Theater 3000 of music videos. How come they keep canceling Family Guy every seven months, then bring it back again? Does that make any sense? Oh, let me guess, it's on Fox, the same network that keeps airing The Simpsons three years past any semblance of funny it once had. FUCK THEM. Christ, do I talk about television too much? I swear, eight of the nine paragraphs I just wrote have to be about the media or something. I need to be BJed. Did you know that PeTA, that organization that values the lives of "animals" ahead of certain people, are distributing trading cards in Canadian schools? Milk Suckers, the name of this wonderful press junket, tries to get kids to stop drinking milk, because the cows are imprisoned in pens and milked against their will or something. Milk Suckers (ha. ha. what. a. funny. double. entendre.) is apparently based on the Garbage Pail Kids template, with characters named Windy Wanda and Chubby Charlie. Oh yeah, PeTA, that's current. Jesus, when were Garbage Pail Kids popular? When I was four, you fucking idiots. FOUR. I can't wait until 2005 when they use Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ripoff characters to try to get kids to protest over the fur trade. Christ, first Popples comes back, and now this... Why would anybody create a fan site for Sluggy Freelance and keep note of how many times a minor character has appeared in the comic? "OH YEAH KIKI'S SISTER DEEDEE HAS APPEARED IN THE COMIC 9 TIMES AND WAS KILLED BY THE STICK FIGURE GUY DURING THE AYLEE BECOMES A PROSTITUTE ARC HURR HURR" Have you ever seen the comic itself? The writer's a graduate of the "Joe Kubert School of Comic Art" or something. The drawings I uploaded in 1999 (back when I was on Xoom and didn't do a metal webzine) look better than that crap. Now that I mention it, most of the webcomics that are on the Internet (especially those on Keenspace, a virtual cesspool of the Internet) I could probably do in eighteen seconds. No, I'm not whistling Dixie. I can personally do Dilbert characters in minutes flat. Shit, what is Dogbert? A circle with legs, arms and glasses, that's what. The Dilbert TV series is eighteen million times better than the comic, by the way. They should really have called the series Larry Charles' Dilbert, because the TV series is actually funny. Scott Adams needs to be gang-raped by Bill Watterson, Charles Schulz and Darby Conley. Is it bad to like Halford's Resurrection? The other four members of Halford aren't gay, you trendy idiots. I mean, Ripper Owens is gayer than Halford ever was, and yet no one's shitcanned him from Judas Priest yet. Metal God my fucking ass. Hey, Michael Barclay, if you're reading this, could you send me a free copy of Have Not Been The Same? I want to read that book. I want to see how many times the authors mention how great the Halifax scene was in 1989, and all the trendy bands that, gosh, should have made it big but didn't. "It was sort of sad that all that came out of the Halifax scene was fiddle bands, when The Hellacious Buttfucker Experience didn't make a ripple in that scene. Given time and publicity, I think the band could have been as big as Eric's Trip." Books like that smack of elitism. Y'know, I'd like to be part of Chart but I don't live in The Center of the Fucking Universe, Toronto. Everybody wants to be Lester Bangs Redux, it makes me sick. By the way, Lester Bangs was a fan of Black Sabbath. Just for that, I rate Lester Bangs ahead of most modern-day "alternative" reviewers. Ah, for the days of (early) Creem, when rock criticism was actually respectable. I saw the episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer when the cast members sang. It was terrible. Sarah Michelle Gellar is a Two-Face, and everyone knows Alyson Hannigan is the hottest-looking cast member of that wonderful Dallas ripoff. I wish they'd cancelled Buffy. The show's a stupid fucking soap opera for 13-year-old fashion victims, and yet television critics can't get enough of the show. Joss Whedon is the fucking Devil. That's it.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS Ben Rayner is a music critic for The Toronto Star. Rayner's reviewing style is one of the poorest I have ever had the displeasure to witness, and yet he's been the paper's main "pop" music reviewer at least since I've read the Arts & Entertainment section of The Saturday Star. Rayner's bias for dance music and rave culture is obvious, as I haven't read a review of his yet that wasn't charitable towards that genre, even when he gives a negative review towards a dance collection (which he rarely does). When he's forced to review something that's currently popular...watch out. For instance, he spent two weeks talking about why "nü-metal sends him over the hill" (and the guy's less than thirty!) in the October 20 and 27 issues of The Saturday Star. Lately, in the December 8 and 15 issues, he's been taking potshots at three of the most obvious targets ever known to man, at least musically: Creed, Kid Rock and Cher, a virtual panoply of white bread. For this, he becomes the first "prey" in the hack-hunting section of The Unbulova Ripoff (and I don't count myself in this). All these reviews are taken from The Saturday Star, and I only disseminate them in the service of demonstrating to other reviewers how people who write for the mainstream press medium write reviews. All right. Here's Ben Rayner's opinion of Creed's third abortion, Weathered: CREED Okay, let's start off with the patently obvious fact that he's making fun of Creed. Yes, Creed sucks, but Andy fucking Milligan, I don't need to read a 130-word review on why Creed sucks. Rayner's hated Creed for years now, and he mentions the band whenever he talks about the crap people are listening to, as the zeitgeist (look, I can use German, too!) of the death of the alt-rock "revolution." This review should have been shelved in favour of something that needs the exposure, but then, I don't work for The Toronto Star, not like I'd want to. By the way, the insulting nature of this review comes from mid-90's indie rock reviewing, while Spin provides the model for name-referencing a lot of critic's clichés. Dude, nothing is that important. Wait! He doesn't stop at Creed. The very next review (one that could also have been filled with a review of something interesting, but probably would have been filled with a review of something on Teenage USA or some other overrated "indie" label) tackles Kid Rock! WOOHOO! BEN'S TACKLING ALL THE PINNACLES OF "REDNECKDOM," Y'ALL! KID ROCKHOOHA! ONLY "REDNECKS" BOUGHT COPIES OF KID ROCK'S DEVIL WITHOUT A CAUSE AND THE HISTORY OF ROCK! THEY MADE FUN OF ME FOR LIKING ERIC'S TRIP WHEN I WAS 18, AND NOW IT'S TIME TO GET BACK AT THOSE JOCKS! BWAHAHAHAHAAAAA! THIS IS WHAT YOU JERKS GET FOR BEATING ME UP AND SHOVING A SHOVEL UP MY ASS REPEATEDLY, YOU HICKS! Sheesh. What's wrong with Lynyrd Skynyrd? Sure, I'm not one of their biggest fans, but at least they were a decent Southern rock band for much of the 1970's. This is what I talk about when I complain about music reviewers. People are entitled to their opinions, but what do reviews like this prove? I could paint the same brush that Rayner is doing with "rednecks" with "alternative" music reviewers. This "Beck nation," as I call it, bought into the hype that was circling around The Strokes, can't review certain genres properly because they have a poor understanding of the genre's history and antecedents (i.e. the "Kittie is death metal" contingent), overhype bands with a groundswell of previous "alternative" press instead of narrowing their focus towards, I don't know, decent local bands, and pretend they're "enlightened" by embracing rap, techno and the Britpop Sensation of the Moment (last year, Coldplay) and making fun of the things that the people that used to make fun of them at high school for listening to The Velvet Underground would listen to (i.e. pop-metal, "classic" rock, country, Steve Miller, that sort of dross). Perhaps I'm painting too broad a picture. I probably am, since I can't stand most "classic" rock, pop-metal or Steve Miller songs either. The difference between them and me is the fact that I actively listen to the stuff these reviewers hate more than Winger � that, and the fact that I know of eighty-seven bands that rock harder than The Zoobombs. (Buy Cheater Slicks CD's! They rock!) Ah, but Big Ben's not done dissecting Big Music Icons yet. Having faced Creed and Kid Rock, Ben Rayner, Superdynamic Music Reviewer of Tomorrow, goes after the blackened black darkness of black that is...CHER!!!!! CHER BOO-YEAH! TAKE THAT, CHER! Honestly, why give the old bat mention? Let her eat fetal grindings with Joan Rivers in a desperate attempt at eternal youth. Again, the old clichés are trotted once more, naturally. Let's see, Rayner makes a dig at the fact that Cher can't keep with trends. Ho ho. Rayner then references a litany of things Cher is trying to ape (of course, none are current). Ha ha. Finally, our old pal ends with the shocking revelation that she's doing this for the money! NO! NOT CHER!!!!! I THOUGHT SHE WAS DOING IT BECAUSE SHE REALLY LOVES DOING MUSIC!!!!!! Again, the review's wasted space. All told, Ben Rayner has reviewed three albums that really shouldn't have been reviewed, and in the process, he's taken away space from bands that deserve it a hell of a lot more than Kid Rock, Creed, and Cher. For that, Ben Rayner shall forever be immortalized as the first of the "hack-hunted" in the hallowed pages of The Unbulova Ripoff. What can I say? He deserves it...
SOLARIZED This is Solarized's first full album with MeteorCity (they had previously done a split with Solace on MeteorCity/Freebird in 1999, before releasing Neanderthal Speedway on Man's Ruin later that year). Driven is more groove-oriented than most MeteorCity releases, and a hell of a lot more rockin'. Most MeteorCity bands urge the listener to take a toke, while this band will urge the listener to knock back a few bottles of Wiser's and a two-four of Moosehead's. The album is basic riff rock with decent vocals and effective hooks on the part of James Hogan and Dave Topolenski. I give Driven a relatively puny mark because there really isn't anything on Driven that makes Solarized stand out amongst a lot of bands I've heard in the stoner scene, and there really isn't much variation on the album � just basic basslines and riffs. This band does kick more ass than most of the bands on MeteorCity, though, and the album is as solid as The Ripping Friends. It makes sense for anybody who's into the stoner scene to pick this album up � I can't think of a more solid 40 minutes of music I've heard all year. If Solarized was a comic character, it wouldn't be Galactus as the bio bumpf says, but it's a Thor nonetheless...you know, the cool Thor, not the bullshit 80's version. That Thor sucked shit. AN UNBULOVA RIPOFF RECOMMENDED ALBUM Goddamn you, Eric Honse. Honestly, Shoreline Barbecue was a surprise to me when I first listened to it. I was expecting another album in the My Life The Chinese Box vein, and in true Wisteria Losenge fashion, it is not. While My Life The Chinese Box was very song-based and oddly beautiful (albeit in that Residents kind of way), Shoreline Barbecue is way more random and experimental. The unique Wisteria Losenge sound is still there, only it's progressed to probably the only way I could see it going: it got weirder. There are some things about the new Wisteria Losenge which I don't really like, of course. In my opinion, Justin Elvidge, the new vocalist for most of the fifteen tracks on this album, doesn't really suit the band. He sounds like every Goth singer I've heard recently. I got used to his vocals � they're not terrible � but he just isn't as good as Eric Honse on vocals. Some of the lyrics, particularly some of the ones on "Split Personalities," just suck, and the lyrics aren't as uniformly fucked up as they were on My Life The Chinese Box. Finally, while there was a uniform sound on My Life The Chinese Box, Shoreline Barbecue is random and meandering. Of course, these are minor quibbles. Shoreline Barbecue is a very worthy album that will appeal to fans of bands on Ralph Records and/or extremely-out-of-left-field electronics (although lumping this band in with "electronica" will win you a chance to have your larynx pulled out, my dear boy). Fuck Slipknot, this is the band from Iowa everyone should be paying attention to. AN UNBULOVA RIPOFF RECOMMENDED ALBUM One of the things that is so interesting about the underground music scene (and I mean under-fucking-ground, not underground as on Relapse or Cacophonous) is the characters you come into contact with along the way. Take the case of Vadim (or Viy, which I guess is his nickname) O. Davidson. He studied violin, piano and musical theory while living in the USSR, got thrown into mental wards after his family moved to the USA, and moved to Tennessee (which, aside from Diskatopia, doesn't have much in the way of electronic music). This is all well and good, but an interesting bio does not make a band good. Thankfully, Viy has put together an electronic project that belies his chaotic existence. Cybernetic Erosion is a band that Diskatopia would release, due to the fact that the music is very original and the keyboards here have actual atmosphere to them. It's obvious that Vadim Davidson has full command of the synthesizer, and though the shortest track on the six-track album is four minutes fifty-eight seconds long, Davidson manages to keep the music interesting throughout. There is a lot of variation on this album, ranging from the black-metal chordage and bleeping of "errosive prayer" to the experimental-sounding fifteen-minute "short circuit (materialisation of abomination.)" The only problem I have with this album is with the vocals. Like Justin Elvidge, Davidson's vocals are the basic British-inflected Goth vocals I've come to grow sick of over the years. Again, such is a minor quibble. Materialization of Abomination is a great album, and even if you're not into electronic music, I recommend getting it. I wish more people would listen to this kind of electronic music as opposed to happy hardcore or techno, but I can't control the tastes of the huddled masses...though I'd really love to, damn E-taking, glow-light-loving freaks... PYAEMIA I haven't been impressed by Unique Leader's bands so far. While Odious Sanction's Psychotically Enraged was an abortion that should never have been released, Pyaemia at least plays some decent death metal. I can't really get into this band, though. Cerebral Cereal is basic mid-to-fast-paced death metal, somewhat technical a la Suffocation, but I didn't think this album was very brutal, myself. In fact, it sounds almost exactly the same as Suffocation, which is why I probably couldn't get into this. The riffs are there, the blastbeats are there, the effective belching vocals are there, but it all seems like it's been done before, and there really isn't anything on Cerebral Cereal that makes me want to kill pigeons and dogs in general. Cerebral Cereal, then, seems like the All-Bran of death metal. Sure, there's brutal goodness in every bowl, and I know it's good for me, but it's bland as hell and nothing on here makes me want to eat this Cerebral Cereal more than once or twice a year. I love the cover, though. I've always known there's nothing more healthy than eating a skull of All-Brain every day. Look for it in your grocery aisle. CHIKMOUNTAIN I feel cheated. With a title like Porn On The Cob I thought I was going to get a collage of tits and asses on the cover. Shows you how much of a fool I am. As for the music, though, Chikmountain plays what the band calls "hardcore ambient sound collage," and that's a pretty accurate description of the type of music the band plays. The music is akin to Negativland's more noise-based side, and Chikmountain shares Negativland's love of samples and "found sound." Lest I pigeonhole the band as clones of aforementioned band, though, there is a lot of variety to be found on this disc. "Electric Toadjuice Experiment," for example, mixes noise guitar sounds with porn clips (who's the guy who said "So how do you like my AIR DILDO," anyway?), while "Revelation 101" uses more muted distorted guitar samples to augment clips of David Koresh talking about his "family" (though the backwards masking is somewhat amateur). All told, Porn On The Cob is fifty-two minutes of decent noise music, and while this type of music is not for everybody (read: some of you reading this might think this music is GAY AS HELL), fans of noise will surely shit themselves silly while listening to this disc. Interesting note: "Where Am I" sounds oddly like a slower version of Wisteria Losenge's "Duplicate Dance" from 1998's Diskatopia's Intimate Gathering Volume One. That's the third time I've referenced Wisteria Losenge since I restarted The Unbulova Ripoff (not including the review of Shoreline Barbecue three reviews above this one). There's no reason why I brought that up; I just find it kind of odd. UNBULOVA RIPOFF RECOMMENDED ALBUMS MOURNING BELOVETH Something strange happened when I was listening to these albums before deciding to include them for review. I listened to Love History, then to Mourning Beloveth, then to Love History, and so on, and a shocking thought came to me. Even though the styles of the two bands are somewhat different (Love History plays progressive death metal, while Mourning Beloveth plays doom), they both have the same sound; both bands are slow, melodic, and yet still undeniably heavy. Besides, as of the day I write this (December 18, 2001), I've been writing these reviews for hours now, and damn it, it's my webzine. You people would be surprised how time-consuming and tiring doing this webzine can be � I write all the HTML coding myself. Front Page sucks, after all.
Mourning Beloveth, by comparison, is not as experimental as Love History, but the band still delivers a mixture of clean vocals and death vox without sacrificing that which makes good doom metal. Although Dust isn't as bleak-sounding or as masterful as Evoken's Quietus, the band still delivers some powerful doom metal. Indeed, Mourning Beloveth and Love History have almost the same guitar sound, although Mourning Beloveth keeps things at a consistently slow tempo throughout Dust. The lyrics are very bleak and keeping in tone with the music. The clean vocals on both albums, oddly, sound almost the same as well. Dust remains interesting to listen to throughout its sixty-one-minute run, and there are never any excursions into musical gayness. While Dust never deviates from its plodding course throughout its hour of musical existence, it compensates that by being at once melodic and, above all, crushingly heavy. All told, the musicians in Mourning Beloveth seem to have found their stride with this album, and it wouldn't shock me if these guys got signed to a label. Hell, Mourning Beloveth shares so many similarities to Love History (the bands both formed in 1992, for example), I wouldn't be surprised if Mourning Beloveth gets signed to The End (although, if you've followed The Unbulova Ripoff for any length of time, you know I'm against that sort of thing). Interesting note: the running time of Dust, if you count the extra minute as sixty seconds, is 60:66. That's fucking grand. To sum up, both Anasazi and Dust, though they have their differences, are quality releases that belong in any self-respecting metalhead's collection. I know, I'm the guy who got both of these as promos, but dammit, I'm the one that tries to get you to buy these albums! BUYYYYY, MY LITTLE METAL CONSUMERS! CONSUME! CONSUUUUUME!!!!!
I have to tell you people, this is a very interesting album. FOR ME TO POOP ON! Dwell is a weird label these days. Sometimes they'll sign or import some decent bands (The Chasm, Coffin Texts, Evoken), but their compilations invariably suck shit. This, though, has to be the point of no return for the label. If you enjoy masturbatory wank-metal in the vein of Ritchie Blackmore or Yngwie Malmsteen, then there's no question you'll cream your pants over this release. For most people, though, this album seems like one long demonstration of whammy bars, arpeggios and massive egos. Unfortunately, I have to include myself in the latter group. Mind you, it's not the guitar gods' fault Gas Chamber Metal sucks shit. Some of the participants in this aural torture device are actually quite talented (Joshua Craig Podolsky and Honza Kirk Behunek especially). It's as an album, though, that Chamber Metal falls apart. This style of metal is nice to listen to for five minutes, and then it gets quite tedious. Add to that the fact that some of the tracks on here are nothing but excuses for showing off the guitar gods' dexterity (Paste and Jura J Topor are two of the worst offenders on here), and the fact that almost NONE of the tracks have anything other than the usual overlaid bass and drums to back the wanking up (Podolsky's "'Sarabande...'/Fading Away" and Behunek's "Gutzy Rose" are exceptions), and you have an album that is destined to kill shred all over again. It's nice to see Dwell release a compilation other than tributes, but even a compilation of Whitehouse ripoff bands would be preferable to listening to this shit. This is a case for trepanation if ever I heard one. SOULSCAR Goddamn, this webzine is pathetic. The Unbulova Ripoff is a Canadian webzine, and yet I only review two Canadian bands in the space of a month? I suck...anyway, it says in the bio that Soulscar's Abandoned "is truly one of the killer metal releases of 2000," and I agree with the bio bulldada for once. Soulscar plays death metal with thrash metal overtones, and the band manages to evade the "thrashy death metal" tag that could have awaited for it. Like Love History and Mourning Beloveth, Soulscar manages to mix thrash metal influences and melodic passages without betraying the assault of the death metal the band is playing. While not incredibly brutal, Abandoned still manages to be aggressive in the vein of a more death metal-oriented Megadeth, which is to say Soulscar is more talented and intense than most thrashy death metal bands. This inviolable fact is made even more amazing by the fact that this band has only two people in it. The vox (provided by Andrew Staehling, who also contributes guitars and bass for this band) are decently growled, and the production is very good for a demo. All told, Abandoned is a good album, and one that proves Soulscar is clearly too talented to be just a demo band. For value freaks, by the way, Soulscar has released their two previous demos, Escaping (the #7 demo in Brave Words and Bloody Knuckles for 1999) and 1998's Lost in Life, on Abandoned. Although I will not include these demos in this review, they are both quite decent and show the evolution of this band in its relatively short existence. Now that is what I call a DEMO!
Everything I've received from Michigan is a hardcore release, or it just seems that way. LeFT is a hardcore/emo band in the vein of Far/Deftones with hardcore vocals. Having listened to the album, I'm left feeling very ambivalent about the whole thing. LeFT sounds new-metallish, and I've grown to hate almost every new-metal band in existence over the years. What LeFT is doing, though, is sort of interesting. The band sounds like a more pissed-off Far. I like Far, and I'm sure LeFT is influenced by the emo-metal sound Far and Deftones popularized in the mid-1990's, but My Disease seems a little too unoriginal for me. For the life of me, I just can't get into the band, because I've never gotten into this style of music in general. I think Far (R.I.P.) is better in just about every aspect of their music than LeFT is, and while I can appreciate what LeFT is doing (at least, a lot more than I can with bands like Caged and Undaground Disciples), the music seems a little phony to me. That, and the rapping on some of the tracks really bothers me. In the end, I'm not really sold on My Disease. While I think the album's okay, it sounds like almost everything that's trendy in the new-metal scene nowadays. I'd only recommend this album to people who like new-metal. To everybody else, I'd say to pass on My Disease, only for the simple reason that there's nothing on here that's going to appeal to fans and proponents of extreme metal. I'm sorry, but that's the way I feel. DAMN 13 This review is going to be short. Damn 13 is a more punked-out Monster Voodoo Machine. That's it. I'm not going to go into how this album sounds like MVM. I'm not going to go into how this album uses the same chord progressions, riffs and guitar sounds as MVM did back in the Suffersystem days. I'm not even going to point out how Adam "Doom" Sewell uses the exact same voice on Damn 13 (with the exact same processing, mind you) that he did on MVM. All I'm going to say is that Damn 13 equals a punkier MVM. You see, Sewell doesn't need me to review his album. All he has to do is hype it on TorontoScene.com and in the pages of The Fang Magazine, both of which have more distribution and publicity than my little webzine. I'm sure if I liked "rap-metal" and Papa Roach, I'd like this, but this personally does nothing for me. Sorry, Sewell. HATEWORK Oh, gee, is this another disappointing CD from Meathook Records? Why, YES IT IS! Actually, I thought the first song was really cool. It had a decent death metal/hardcore crossover sound with effective death metal vocals. I thought it was going to be like this for the four songs on this EP, but noooooo! This Is A Holocaust Waiting To Wake Itself just had to degenerate into hardcore-influenced new-metal with "Namtar Akai" attempting whiny build-up vocals and lame hardcore "grunts" a la Soulfly, not to mention Beavis-with-laryngitis vocals on "hung." Needless to say, this album sucks. Hatework isn't as bad as Caged or Undaground Disciples, but the album isn't very good, and there are way more worthy crossover bands to waste your money on. I'm going to deviate from the review at this point to talk about something related to Hatework, but it's not about the music. Hatework has a gimmick at hand for selling copies of Holocaust. Unfortunately, it's the GWAR gimmick. It irritates me when any band feels it needs to resort to gimmicks like this to sell albums. Sure, the masks and outfits are elaborate, and the aliases for the seven members of the band are kind of cute ("Dr. Mordehast," "Namtar Akai," and "Pancho Villa" are my favourites), but it's still a gimmick. For instance, I've seen GWAR's Scumdogs Of The Universe in a few pawn shops, as well as numerous copies of Green Jellö's 333 and Cereal Killer Soundtrack. Both GWAR and Green Jellö used the gimmick of dressing up in elaborate costumes, and it worked for them in the mid-1990's. Today, both bands are seen as jokes to the metal scene, and are looked upon as little more than curios. Behind the image, there wasn't much substance (especially in the case of Green Jellö, them of the freak hit "Three Little Pigs"). "But WAIT!" you say. "What about Slipknot?" Well, even though Slipknot plays new-metal, at least that band focuses on writing decent songs (as opposed to, say, letting the Cow Man run on stage for thirteen minutes). It's obvious Hatework has Slipknot in mind when airing the hoary costume gimmick for another go-around. I don't think Hatework will be successful until the band starts writing decent songs, because the talent is there. What the bandmembers do with their collective talent, though, is their call. Well, that's it for this week. Merry Xmas, unless you're not Christian, in which case, HAPPY GETTING LOTS OF FREE SHIT DAY! After all, isn't that what the meaning of Christmas has degenerated to?
DIRECTOR: ANDY MILLIGAN It's a pity people haven't heard of Andy Milligan. In a just world, Milligan would be hailed as a genius of bad filmmaking. Unfortunately, the world is, sadly, unjust. How else can you explain the fact that Ed Wood, Jr. is almost without question hailed as "the worst director of all time?" Milligan's career runs circles around Ed Wood's. While Wood at least tried to direct different types of films, Milligan stuck to horror and sexploitation films for his entire four-decade career. Wood wore angora sweaters, while Milligan was openly gay. Wood used silent home movie footage of Bela Lugosi to replace the star who had died while Plan 9 From Outer Space was being filmed. Milligan killed animals on camera on two separate occasions. See how superior Andy Milligan is to Ed Wood? Tim Burton should have made a movie about him. Anyway, The Rats Are Coming! The Werewolves Are Here!, which Milligan wrote, filmed, directed and even acted in, is about the Mooney family, of which all the members of the family are werewolves. The father Mooney and the rest of the family are dismayed when the one who was to take care of him, Diana, comes home with a man, Gerald. For the next ninety minutes, the family tries to deal with this development (father wanted Diana to come back alone after graduating from medical school, see � he's more than 150 years old). Their youngest, Malcolm, is feral and is locked in a room where he attacks chickens and whatnot. One of the daughters, Monica, buys man-eating rats from "Mr. Macabre" (I shit you not) and likes to torture Malcolm. Phoebe, Pop Mooney's caretaker, looks about fifty years old. If you think this kind of plotting sounds great, it's nothing compared to seeing the film. Milligan's writing is atrocious, and a lot of his shots are nothing more than a few minutes of two family members bickering at each other (there is a LOT of talking in this movie, by the way). Sometimes, to break the tedium, Milligan will show things like a chicken being torn apart in poor lighting and (I shit you not, again) a real live mouse having its head crushed in with a knife. The film stock sometimes gets incredibly yellow. The sound is atrocious. The acting is uniformly piss-poor, even from the guy who's playing Malcolm (how hard is it to growl convincingly?) Finally, the special effects budget is nil (Milligan just cut to a shot of the "werewolves," which don't look anything like werewolves at all, more like Neanderthals). Indeed, this film is so bad I'm wondering why it was never featured in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. It's difficult to put into words how bad the film is; you'd really have to see it to believe it. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would release this shit. If you think I'm overhyping Milligan, keep in mind that this is the guy who released films like Bloodthirsty Butchers, Torture Dungeon, Surgikill and Guru, The Mad Monk (Guru being considered the worst of all his films). Sure, they may sound good and gory on paper, but most of his films are as bad as the one I just synopsed. Milligan is a director that should be studied by connoisseurs of bad filmmaking. Why he isn't now is a question that even the greatest minds in the history of film could probably not be able to answer. CARBONIZED Carbonized is a side-project from members of Therion. Those expecting the usual mix of classical and metal influences that Therion is famous for will not find them on Disharmonization. What Carbonized is attempting here is to merge two influences, grindcore and indie rock. I am not shitting you on this. Musically, the album is somewhat interesting, if not fully successful. Those expecting real fast grind will not find it on Disharmonization; most of the time, the album keeps to a mid-pace, with occasional fast parts and blastbeats on some of the tracks. Most of the time, Carbonized tends to play indie-influenced guitars (sometimes while singing clearly, sometimes not) while keeping to a steady beat. The result is jarring, to say the least. There seem to be many different vocal styles on this album (Christofer Johnsson, Piotr Wawrzeniuk and Lars Rosenberg share in the vocal duties), as well as many different types of effects. Unfortunately, this sort of experimentation is not fully successful, since the different styles of music that Carbonized is playing rarely mix; the band tends to play long indie-derived passages and then go into grind mode for thirty seconds, then a nice piano interlude, etc. Disharmonization, then, seems to be an "extreme metal" jam that lasts for almost forty minutes. It's not very brutal, and listening to it can sometimes get annoying. One thing Disharmonization never is, though, is boring. Don't get this if you expect 1000% brutality; it's just not there. Fans of Therion and/or experimental extreme metal, though, should pick this up if they ever find it in a pawn shop or in the delete bins of their local record store (where it's probably going to be, anyway). It's worth the few bucks. By the way, I found this album in the delete bins of an Ottawa Zellers. That's right, I FOUND A METAL ALBUM IN FUCKING ZELLERS. I also found Cabaret Voltaire and Coil CD's at this Ottawa Zellers, and for that, I consider that Zellers THE COOLEST FUCKING ZELLERS EVER. Unless I get eighteen promos next time, the re-reviews section will probably be a little more full than it has been these last two issues. I will review Dark Angel's Darkness Descends, Gonzales' Gonzales Uber Alles, Cabaret Voltaire's Johnny Yesno soundtrack, Dee Dee King's Standing in the Spotlight (for the uninitiated, it's Dee Dee Ramone trying, unsuccessfully, to rap), and a whole lot of other shit I was too lazy to review the last time I did The Unbulova Ripoff. Until next time, this is Camoron Archer, signing off with a porno and a hand flute. Good night!
A COMMENTARY ON WHY WEBCOMICS SUCK, BY ALIAS HATRED TALES FROM URANUS, AGAIN UNDERGROUND ZINE SCENE VIBRATIONS OF DOOM UNCHAIN THE UNDERGROUND THE GRIMOIRE OF EXALTED DEEDS JUMP THE SHARK QUADRIVIVM SATAN STOLE MY TEDDYBEAR Some sites related to metal. I haven't personally been to these sites, but they sent their website addresses through e-mail, so check 'em out. I hope they don't all suck.
One more for the road before I put this kitty to bed.
Anyway, those are the links for tonight. I'll be sure to have some more links by next issue, so say tuned! By the way, if you think some of the links suck, that's your opinion. OPINION. NOT FACT. Of course, even if you tell them eighteen hundred times, some people still won't get it...their problem, I guess...
If you want your album, demo or 'zine reviewed in another edition of The Unbulova Ripoff, just send your shit to: THE UNBULOVA RIPOFF
My e-mail address is [email protected]. I still don't have any hate mail to pass along. In fact, none of the e-mails I get are thrilling enough that I want to reveal them to the world through The Unbulova Ripoff. Come on, people. Most of you think I'm a poser, so come on, ya jackoffs! WRITE TO ME! PLEASE??? Well, this appears to be the final issue of The Unbulova Ripoff for 2001. 2001 sucked for me, personally. Hopefully 2002 will be what 2001 couldn't get itself to be, the poser. Anyway, until next issue, I leave you with this final thought: why is it webzines like mine never become famous, yet Metal Sludge gets a thousand hits a day? Explain that to me... Anyway, thanks for putting up with my shit for another month. Don't leave your stick on the ice, stay sick, and God Bless America. The war on terrorism is not over yet, no matter what the hell CNN says... 
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Love History plays progressive death metal with a mixture of many musical elements, and it is to the band's credit that none of the excursions into orchestral parts and other types of music sound half-hearted or cheesy (unlike, say, Einherjer). Love History is worlds beyond other bands in terms of taking in non-metal influences, for instead of sacrificing heaviness in lieu of adding, say, a Flamenco guitar to the mix (unlike 
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©2001 Sweetpea Entertainment. All rights reserved. Prosecuters will be fisked with baseball bats until they lapse into a coma and/or die, so don't say I didn't warn you.