Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
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46 posts tagged metal
Cirith Ungol - Edge of a Knife
Cirith Ungol was an American metal group most active during the 80s that started off sounding like a 70s hard rock act akin to early Judas Priest. They weren’t really revivalists, though; they’d formed in the early 70s but just didn’t manage to score a record deal until 1980. I think the album’s cover is the perfect level of corny for a record like this. It matches the band’s constantly over-the-top vocal and guitar theatrics that make their songs so fun to listen to.
42 Plays
Lucifer's Friend - In The Time of Job When Mammon Was A Yippie
Happy Record Store Day! I celebrated by picking up an original copy of Lucifer’s Friend’s self-titled debut. These Germans are probably my favourite of the country’s hard rock acts. Their later releases became more oriented toward jazz-rock, like a lot of German and Eastern European bands’ material became in the late 70s, but this first album was all about heavy, distorted riffing. This is the album to listen to if you’re interested in the pioneers of heavy metal.
40 Plays | Download
Stray - Suicide
Stray’s 1971 effort, Suicide, didn’t stray too far from material covered in their debut, but who would really want them to? This album is British hard rock at its finest: lead guitar domination, hoarse vocals, heavy rhythm section, and blown-speaker distortion. This is the album’s title track, an 8 minute long riff-fest. Sabbath and Judas Priest fans should enjoy this a lot.
45 Plays | Download
Iron Maiden - All In Your Mind
It almost seems irresponsible to not post Iron Maiden’s cover of Stray’s All In Your Mind. As with everything Iron Maiden, it’s nothing but pure class. Originally this was the B side on their 1990 single, Holy Smoke, but I don’t have that.
12 Plays | Download
Stray - All In Your Mind
Stray was hugely influential 70s psychedelic rock band that hailed from Britain. They get lumped in with guitar-focussed progressive rock bands like Captain Beyond and Wishbone Ash because some of their songs are similarly sprawling, but they just often wade through heavy blues riffs using as much distortion as possible like Toad or Leaf Hound. Iron Maiden fans might recognize this song, All In Your Mind, as the metal band did a cover of it on their Holy Smoke single, later included as a bonus track on No Prayer For The Dying’s reissue. This is the full on, 9 minute long meltdown version that kicked off Stray’s 1970 debut (Maiden covered the much shorter single version).
11 Plays | Download
Flower Travellin' Band - Black Sabbath
I never seem to post songs in the right order. Here’s the cover of Black Sabbath that I mentioned yesterday, done by the Flower Travellin’ Band on their 1970 debut. Apparently it was the very first cover done of Black Sabbath’s work. The band all posing nude for the cover stirred up quite a bit of controversy at the time.
31 Plays | Download
Flower Travellin' Band - Satori Part 1
Flower Travellin’ Band really surprised me. With a name like that, I was not expecting to be listening to a Japanese proto-metal record. The band’s guitar work is all about droning distortion, and the singer shouts more than sings, a lot like Ozzy Osbourne. Their first full-length album was all covers, apparently featuring the first ever Black Sabbath cover song. They also did a take on King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man, and this 1971 record, Satori, sounds like a healthy mix of those two bands’ early work.
In 1973 they were going to be the opening act for the Rolling Stones’ Japanese tour, but Mick Jagger’s visa was rejected so all of the concerts were cancelled. So sad.
21 Plays
Morgen - Welcome To The Void
Morgen was a short-lived psychedelic rock band out of Long Island led by Steven Morgen during the late 60s. This self-titled 1969 record is all they managed to put out, but it’s a great relic of fuzzy psychedelia. The over-driven guitar on this album is distorted to basically absurd levels, which is exactly how I like it and how I do the effects on my own guitar. These guys are definitely worth a listen if you like your rock and roll rough around the edges. Boring as hell album art though.
31 Plays
Leaf Hound - Drowned My Life in Fear
Don’t let the cheery mushroom and psychedelic rainbow themed cover art for this album fool you; Leaf Hound was one of the heaviest 1970s British psychedelic groups. They were big fans of distorting their blues grooves as far as was possible in 1971 and in doing so they helped spawn the whole genre of heavy psychedelic rock. Bands like Clutch, Judas Priest, and Wo Fat owe a lot of their sound to this album’s pioneering heaviness.
30 Plays
Wo Fat - Bayou Juju
I was going to post from another folk album tonight, but then I found out that I’d missed Wo Fat’s 2011 album and got all excited.
Wo Fat is an American band that plays super distorted, psychedelic rock. I don’t like getting overly specific with music genres, but this is sludge rock. They describe themselves as spiritual successors to heavy 70s bands like Leaf Hound, and being able to drop that name wins them serious brownie points. I wish I lived somewhere where I could turn my amps up as loud as these guys do. Although they probably have the grossest tinnitus ever.
10 Plays | Download
