The Dwarves: Must Die Redux CD Review (MVD Audio)

(from a June '10 Interview with Punknews)
PunkNews: The new Dwarves record is tentatively titled The Dwarves Are Born Again. The previous record was called The Dwarves Must Die. Can you explain the significance?

Blag Dahlia: Once we were dead, it was critical that we be reborn. Otherwise, who's gonna make the records? Although Tupac managed to make quite a few records after he was dead. And so did HeWhoCanNotBeNamed.



The Dwarves new disc isn't out just yet but MVD Audio's reissue of 2004's The Dwarves Must Die should serve as a good stop-gap. The Dwarves Must Die was originally issued on Sympathy for the Record Industry and has been long out of print. As part of this reissue, MVD adds two non-LP singles: "Kaotica" (which was originally released as the b-side to "Salt Lake City" and "Kids Today" (from the Rock Against Bush compilation).



This disc has held up well over the last few years and the flow of the tracks are fairly indicative of the The Dwarves' current live show. This disc follows in the style of Come Clean and includes a number of memorable melodic hooks. The Dwarves Must Die's seventeen tracks (all clocking in around two minutes) are a mix of power-punk, surf rock and hardcore. (Note: I'm intentionally glossing over The Dwarves ill-advised, but amusing, venture into Beatie Boys style rap.)

The disc include guest spots from Dexter Holland from The Offspring, Nash Kato from Urge Overkill, desert rock icon Nick Oliveri, Josh Freese from The Vandals and Spike from Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. Dexter Holland adds his distinctive vocals to "Salt Lake City" and Nick Oliveri guests on "Massacre". The Dwarves have been poking fun at absolutely everyone for the last twenty years but eveidently Josh Homme took offense to the lyrics of Massacre: "This one goes out to Queens of the Trust Fund/You slept on my floor/And now I'm sleeping through your motherfucking records" as he was sentenced to 36-months of probation for an assault on Blag in 2004.

While you aren't going to hear the blood, guts and chaos of The Dwarves' early live show, The Dwarves Must Die is what punk rock is all about.

Links:
The Dwarves

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

Hy-Test: "Dishing Out the Good Times" CD Review (Impedance Records/MVD)

DOWNLOAD: Impedance Sampler (w/ Hy-Test's "Girl in Black", Nick Oliveri's "This Isn't Love", etc.)

Following up on their 2006 EP “The Little Band That Could”, Wollongong, Australia garage-punk outfit Hy-Test have just released their debut full-length, Dishing Out the Good Times (Impedance Records). This disc finds the band on the same label as Nick Oliveri and Hy-Test bassist/vocalist Luke Armstrong and guitarist/vocalist Mick Curley were most recently members of Mondo Generator’s 2010-touring lineup.

The tie to Mondo Generator gives a good indication of what to expect from Dishing Out the Good Times. The brunt of the disc is fuzzed-out garage punk but there are significant elements of hardcore toward the later half of the disc. The disc’s eleven tracks barrel by in just under 30 minutes leaving the listener with barely enough time to catch their breath.

Here is a live video from a few years back that gives a good indication of the ferocity of the band’s live show.



While the band sticks to their high-energy format across this disc, there are enough stylistic surprises to keep the listener's attention. The disc starts strong with the driving, grungy opening-track “9 Volt” and goes from there into the hard-edged power pop of “Girl in Black”. “Crazy for You” starts with a spoken word/funk groove which leads into an explosive breakdown. From here, the band goes through alt-rock (“Magnet”), MC5-style R&B (“Goodbye”), and straightforward hardcore (“Our Career”, “Smokeskull”). Finishing up the disc is the instrumental “Rambling of a Mute”.

There is more than enough to like here so…fingers crossed for a US tour sometime in the near future.

Links:
Hy-Test

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