Mondo Generator Release New Single "Dog Food" // Show at Santos Party House on August 19th

Over the last year, band founder Nick Oliveri and fellow member Hoss, alongside producer Bradley Cook have been working on Mondo Generator's fourth full length album Time To Destroy. During the recording process they enlisted a number of guests to make an appearance and "Dog Food" is the first taste of who is featured on the album. With Marc Diamond (The Dwarves) on guitar duties, Happy Tom (Turbonegro) has laid down some bass tracks, while Dave Grohl provides the drum tracks and Nick Oliveri delivers his trademark vocals. "Dog Food" will be released as a limited edition 7" as well as in an extended cd/digital format on August 10th and the band's US tour kicks off August 4th.

Here is the track list for the CD Single and vinyl 7":

CD Single (21 Minutes)
Dog Food
Smashed Apart (acoustic)
This Isn't Love (acoustic)
Green Machine (live/acoustic)
Endless Vacation (live/acoustic)
Bloody Hammer (live/acoustic)
Dungaree High (live/acoustic)
Pushed Aside (live/acoustic)

Vinyl 7" (5 Minutes)
Dog Food
Smashed Apart (acoustic)

Mondo Generator is playing at Santos Party House on August 19th along with Tweak Bird, Violent Soho and The Netherlands. Tickets are $10 and doors are at 7PM.

Links:
Mondo Generator

HeWhoCannotBeNamed - "Sunday School Massacre" CD Review (MVD Audio)

Sunday School Massacre (MVD Audio) is the debut solo effort from the (frequently naked) Dwarves guitarist HeWhoCannotBeNamed. This 12 track // 33 minute disc is a bit harder-edged and than recent releases from The Dwarves but it isn’t that far removed from The Dwarves’ core sound.

The songs are predominately guitar-heavy pieces where a number of songs build to a wall-of -noise (similar to early Nirvana). The Nirvana comparison holds in part with the vocals as well as HeWhoCannotBeNamed has a rough but clear vocal style that is closer to Bleach-era Cobain than Blag’s smoother delivery. The overall disc has a clean sound, courtesy of HeWhoCannotBeNamed and co-producer Bradley Cook (Counting Crows, Foo Fighters) and features Dwarves bassist Saltpeter on bass and acoustic guitars, The Fresh Prince of Darkness on guitar and Andy Selway (KMFDM, The Dwarves) on drums. Both Nick Oliveri and Blag Dahlia add guest vocals to a couple of the tracks.

Given HeWhoCannotBeNamed’s long tenure with The Dwarves, it is no surprise that the lyrical themes are in the gutter. Lyrics for these twelve sing-a-long punk anthems range from the disc opener “Happy Suicide” (no explanation needed here), Dwarves style sexual themes (“Duct Tape Love” – “greatest invention of mankind, the only way to make you mine”) to sci-fi (“Machine Boy”). The disc bounces around stylistically between grunge, punk and power pop but none of these style shifts are disconcerting. “Superhero” features vocals from Blag and could have been a Dwarves cut, “Duct Tape Love” sounds like a Ramones outtake and “Toxine” sounds like a sixties-style ‘girl group’ ballad. “Sinister Sal” is clausterphobic and psychedelic, like an early Dwarves cut and “Wake Up” includes a rap break. (“Get Stupid // Go Dumb // Ride This Yellow Bus with Your Zipper Undone”)



HeWhoCannotBeNamed claims that the lyrics and title, Sunday School Massacre, were inspired by his experiences as a counselor/teacher with teenagers suffering from mental illness or abuse and that many of the songs were actually written while he was on duty at a residential treatment facility. Coming from a guy who faked his own death back in the 90’s, you have to take stories like this with a grain of salt but it does make for fun reading.

Here's HeWho has revealed about the song "Machine Boy":
"There was this kid that I worked with when I was a counselor. I'll call him S____. S____ was about 13 when I knew him, and he had some serious physical disabilities because his mom's boyfriend had beat the shit out of him when he was an infant. I heard that the guy had thrown him into a wall when he was less than a year old. Anyway, it had seriously fucked him up. Both his hands were gnarled so that he couldn't really pick stuff up. His spine was out of alignment or something, so he had to wear some kind of brace. Of course, he wore big thick glasses, and before he went to bed he had to use a breathing apparatus with big tubes. And to top it all off, he regularly shit his pants so he had to wear diapers. Life had not been good to S____, but he was really a pretty nice kid in spite of all this. I noticed that S____ was really into reading comics. He especially liked superheroes, and I think he imagined himself to be one. One night I saw him getting ready for bed with his fresh diaper on, breathing through his big plastic tubes while reading some comic, and I wondered if S____ himself were to be a superhero, like he most likely imagined himself, what he would be like. That night I sat down and wrote most of "Machine Boy". I couldn't quite get the last verse though, so the next day I asked S____ for help. I asked him what he thought the strongest super power of all is. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then said "I think it's the "Soul Burn". He explained that this is an evil power that goes far beyond just destroying your body, but gets completely inside you and burns everything else out. S_____ actually inspired some of the lines in Motorboating as well."

Sunday School Massacre is raw, lewd and fun – the way punk rock was meant to be.

Links:
HeWhoCannotBeNamed

Nick Oliveri - Death Acoustic CD Review (MVD/Impedance)

Nick Oliveri is currently touring behind his second solo CD, Death Acoustic, and the tour stops at Piano's next Saturday night (Jan. 23rd). Oliveri is playing with Weird Owl (Tee Pee Records) and Goes Cube (The End Records) and advance tickets are $10.

Death Acoustic is a collection of mostly covers with the majority of the songs coming from bands that Oliveri has played with in the past. While this is an acoustic collection, there is nothing soft or gentle about some of Nick's reinterpretations of some of these songs. Nick attacks songs like Raw Power's "Start a Fight" (the disc's opener) and new song "Invisible Like The Sky" with an aggressive brutality that will make listeners never again associate acoustic with emo. From this point, Oliveri goes into a raw cover of The Dwarves' "Dairy Queen" and melodic stripped-down version of QOTSA's "I'm Gonna Leave You".

I don't think I've appreciated the diversity of Oliveri's vocal styles prior to this release. Nick delivers a cover of Kyuss' "Love Has Past Me By" in a gutter punk voice and goes from there to frenzied screamed/spat vocals on a cover of the Moistboyz's "U Blow". One of the highlights of the disc is a melodic and lilting cover of The Misfits' "Hybrid Moments" which features double-tracked vocals.

The disc wraps up with a fuzzed-out version of Mondo Generator's "Unless I Can Kill" which captures the intensity of the original song, a straight-forward melodic cover of The Dwarves' "Follow Me" and a reworking of G.G. Allin's "Outlaw Scumfuc". On this last track, Oliveri goes beyond the song's original version and gets closer to the outlaw country sounds of Hank Williams than G.G. Allin was ever able to.



Links:
Nick Oliveri's MySpace Profile

Nick Oliveri Brings 'Death Acoustic' Tour to Pianos on Jan. 23rd (QotSA, The Dwarves)

Bassist Nick Oliveri is playing a series of East Coast shows starting next month in support of his solo debut Death Acoustic.

Fans of Oliveri's over-the-top performances with QOTSA, The Dwarves and Kyuss shouldn't be scared off that Oliveri is playing an acoustic set. The material on this new EP includes covers of G.G. Allin ("Outlaw Scumfuc"), The Dwarves ("Dairy Queen") and QOTSA's "Autopilot". There are a number of live videos posted to YouTube from Oliveri's recent tour of Australia, New Zealand and Europe which show that, while he has reduced the volume, he hasn't lost any of his intensity.



Here are the upcoming tour dates:
Fri, January 22nd - Middle East , Cambridge MA
Sat, January 23rd - Pianos , New York NY
Sun, January 24th - Khyber , Philadelphia PA
Mon, January 25th - Velvet Lounge , Washington DC
Tue, January 26th - Volume 11 Tavern , Raleigh NC
Wed, January 27th - Casbah @ Tremont Music Hall , Charlotte NC
Thu, January 28th - Lenny's , Atlanta GA
Fri, January 29th - The End , Nashville TN
Sat, January 30th - Hi Tone , Memphis TN
Mon, February 1st - Double Door , Chicago IL
Tue, February 2nd - Frequency , Madison WI
Wed, February 3rd - Southgate House , Newport KY
Thu, February 4th - Grog Shop , Cleveland OH
Fri, February 5th - Small's , Hamtramck MI
Sat, February 6th - Garfield Artworks , Pittsburgh PA

Links:
Nick Oliveri