With Bloodshot In Your Eyes
It’s May 29th, 2023 and I’ve been given notice that there are 2 more records that are ready to be shipped out to yours truly. Lafff Box’s Self-Titled LP and Evil Tree - Moon Maniac are packed up in boxes and ready for the trip over to British Columbia from Ontario. If you’re unfamiliar with them, we can right that wrong here and now.
Lafff Box is a group from Germany spread over 3 cities that play manic, high-energy Punk Rock of the Garage variety but with the velocity of a Hardcore band. Think of those early Reatards records or a more bombastic Marked Men and you’ll be in the right spot. When Chain Whip was on tour in Germany we played our first gig with them and they blew us away with a furious Ramones beat, two-dozen gold-star hooks per song and a set of total sonic energy. It was enough that the jet-lag was sucked from my body for just a mere moment of time and I was immediately stoked to be on the road. While we launched into our first couple of tracks, I was crawling around on the floor of the venue while Marion from Lafff Box was hanging from the rafters. Have a listen here and know God.
Evil Tree is yet another project from the current King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Mr. Drew Owen - a tireless road dog, riff machine and true maniac. You'll know him as the mastermind behind Sick Thoughts and drummer of Total Hell. Evil Tree is a blackened Rock ‘n’ Roll project that has more in common with the earliest Midnight recordings and ..Funeral Moon era Dark Throne. You’re not going to hear the early GG Allin-esq Rock ‘n’ Roll that was on display with Heaven Is No Fun. You might be expecting a straight up Metal project but there are a couple of Hardcore tracks that sound like they could have been demo sessions for Fenriz prior to selling his soul. Moon Maniac was previously released on cassette on DEtH Records in a criminally small run so I’m happy we could get it out in a more robust pressing. Initially this was just another recording project by Drew but there has been talk about doing a tour around it in support of the 12”. Here’s hoping! Either way this thing stands on it’s own and he’s already been sending me demos of new stuff under the same Evil Tree banner.
In other news, the cassingle for Death Angel by Dark Recollection should be ready to go at the end of the week and I’m hoping to have those pre-orders in the mail before I take off for a week to Calgary - more on that later. Dark Recollection is a solo project by Anju Singh of Ahna, Grave Infestation, Ceremonial Bloodbath and The Nausea. A sidestep for us at the label as it’s a straight Darkwave track that’s perfect for layering your eyeliner for the midnight gRAVEyard romp. It’s a limited, 100 copy release so get it now before it’s gone forever.
The Imploders LP is pressed and awaiting pickup, I’ll be grabbing that before the release date so you should have your copies on time-ish and it’ll be available at discerning distros and stores soon. This thing is a monster. Very happy to get it into your hands as it’s a Summer barnburner of an LP.
We’ve got two more records that are almost ready to go, hopefully we’ll have that information shortly and you’ll be as stoked as I am.
Chain Whip played a couple of gigs with Calgary’s Bat Scratch over the weekend and though I definitely blew out my knee on the Vancouver date and had to cut the show short because of it, we had a blast. The novelty of a child screeching over blazing-fast hardcore is fun as hell but the real kicker was a band made up of the same members with a different singer. They are called Wallpaper. It’s furiously fast, noisy and violent. In Vancouver the bass player attacked the vocalist and ended up clearing the pit out with some actual violence as they rolled in a ball of fists, kicks, mics and patch chords. After the brief fight they just took turns kicking at each other while trying to mostly play the rest of the set. I guess the 6 hour drive from Vernon to Vancouver was enough to drive em crazy. I asked them what was up after their set and they said “Oh we just like to have fun with it, I do that every show.” Uh - check em out while you can? I don’t expect them to last very long.
I’ve been packing my house up for the move to Calgary that will be occurring over the next couple of months. Vancouver has just become completely unaffordable for me to run a label and after losing my real job last year I’ve been pretty lost. Things are getting better and the move is going to be good, I think it’ll actually help me get things rolling even more-so. The most daunting thing about moving is how many records I have. The nice thing about moving is you keep coming across things you didn’t know you had. Case-in-point, this DIY record by Canadian obscurities, Dundas. I’m sure they were named after the Toronto street. Their lone single was released on the Silent W. Records label that you might recognize as having released The Innocent and Tyro singles. Though The Innocent is probably the best single on the label, it’s still worthwhile grabbing the Dundas record. A garage-y punker with one clean guitar and some fuzz leads on both sides. The notable track here is the A-Side, Bloodshot In Your Eyes. This is worth it for the Neil Young impression which is spot on. You could convince someone it was The Godfather Of Grunge himself. Check it out. I’m sure by this time you’re thoroughly sick of reading this so I’m going to check out but not before leaving one more little piece of Canadian crap for you to be ambivalent about. It’s true that aside from the more known and celebrated recordings, it seems there isn’t too much amazing from this Country waiting to be dug up. You just have to lower your standards a bit. Go easy on us, we’re from Canada. That being said, I did pick up a cassette by a Christian AOR/Heavy Metal group called Double Edge while on the road this week it looks incredible and has some pretty wild cover art. I researched it a bit and found that they had a 7” from 1976 for the track Leather Lust. The cassette I got is from 1990 and has full Christ-loving lyrics all over it. The 7” is pretty great and I’ll track one down sometime. I haven’t had a chance to check out this cassette as my stereo is already packed but I’ll let you all know how terrible/incredible it is when I do. Til then, some heavenly headbanger uploaded the single to YouTube so you can check it out here and repent for your sins of not being aware of the great power of Canadian, Private Press, Christian metal.