Morbus 666 is a project of Imprecation vocalist and Bahimiron multi-instrumentalist Dave Herrera, who has a number of projects of note and clearly understands underground metal as the living, untameable thing it is. The band have just releases Mortuus Cultus on Graveless Slumber Records, and you can now hear a track from it:

Morbus 666- Baphe Metis (Absorption into Wisdom)

Label release:

GSR is now taking preorders on the debut material from one of the newest and in my opinion best Texas black metal bands, Morbus 666! Comprised of members of Bahimiron, Adumus, Imprecation, and Thornspawn, Morbus delivers venomous vile black metal in the old ways! This album unleashes 5 tracks of morbidly twisted black metal in the Behexen meets early Enthroned vein, all for the glory of the Horned One! All preorders and an unspecified number of first editions will come with 7″ bonus artwork outer sleeve as well as stickers and possibly more!

Track List-

1) Summon the Cult of Pentagram
2) Baphe Metis (Absorption into Wisdom)
3) Possessed by the Glory of Lucifer
4) Those of the Devil’s Flesh
5) Poisonous Blood

Yosuke Konishi (NWN) returned to KFJC radio to do another six hours of radio madness. If you like old school and new-underground metal mixed in about equal proportions, this show is filthy loud and fast, and evil.

• Playlist
• Audio (380mb)

KDVS has its long-running “Raise the Dead” show which played the same night, and can be found at the archive page:

• Playlist
• Audio

HOMOSEXUAL-THEMED PUNK BAND seeks guitarist and drummer

Bassist and rhythm guitarist seek second guitarist and
drummer for punk band heavily influenced by DISCHARGE
and ASSUCK. Must be reliable, no hard drugs, no police
records (we want to tour). Band name is
ASSCHARGE. Contact us Box 211

OLD SCHOOL DEATH METAL BAND seeks chumps

Hey you, remember when death metal was huge?
So do we! We bought the same gear, have the
classic sound, and we write songs like drug
addled teenagers. If nostalgia has you by the
balls, call us. Box 644.

BREADMAKER FOR SALE

If you remember the trends of the past, you know
these were hot little items in the late 1990s. Everyone
I know had one. Now I’ve got them all. Make an offer…
any offer. Box 665.

Instead of indie rock dressed up as metal, it’s punk dressed up as indie rock with heavy metal influences.

Definitely better than any indie metal from the last 10+ years

Just for kicks and contrast, some early Amebix too:

Paul Speckmann (ABOMINATION, DEATH STRIKE, MASTER) writes:

Looking for a guitarist drummer team in Europe to fill the position on the Abomination tour in November. Interested?
November 3rd until date unknown. 15 shows.

If interested, contact the Speckmaster through http://www.facebook.com/Speckmetal.

I can’t believe that, in a community of people who claim to be so tight and supportive, this hasn’t gotten more traction.

Nuclear War Now! Productions label head Yosuke Konishi logged on to KSFJ radio and recorded a six-hour live broadcast of his favorite metal tracks:

Playlist / Parts 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 4 ~ 5 ~ 6 ~ 7 ~ 8 ~ 9 ~ 10

Mostly old-school stuff with some new-underground additions.

For your convenience, here are all of the shows in a single archive (635mb, Megaupload) so that you can download them with one click and happily listen away.

I have to say that Yosuke K. did an excellent job with these shows. The purpose of radio, like sampler CDs or written reviews, is to expose an audience to contenders for quality and/or insightful music. By providing a contrast between samples, the DJ shows his audience what he has learned (as an expert in the subject) and allows them to make their own choices about where they fit into that vision. More information from the man himself in this forum topic.

Inter-National Day of Slayer — June 6, 2011.

The Inter-National Day of Slayer is a worldwide holiday for metalheads by metalheads.

Slayer is an emblem of metal: fast, powerful, still alien to the mainstream after 28 years.

If every other religious, ethnic and political group gets their own holiday, we deserve one too.

Who is Slayer

Slayer is a band from California. Their music has come to epitomize Satanic speed metal music in the latter half of the 20th century. Their 1986 album, “Reign in Blood” is one of the single most influential metal albums of all time, typified by the modern classic “Angel of Death”.

How to Celebrate

• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your car.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in your home.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast at your place of employment.
• Listen to Slayer at full blast in any public place you prefer.

DO NOT use headphones! The objective of this day is for everyone within earshot to understand that it is the National Day of Slayer. National holidays in America aren’t just about celebrating; they’re about forcing it upon non-participants.

Taking that participation to a problematic level:

• Stage a “Slay-out.” Don’t go to work. Listen to Slayer.
• Have a huge block party that clogs up a street in your neighborhood. Blast Slayer albums all evening. Get police cruisers and helicopters on the scene. Finish with a full-scale riot.
• Spray paint Slayer logos on churches, synagogues, or cemeteries.
• Play Slayer covers with your own band (since 99% of your riffs are stolen from Slayer anyway).
• Kill the neighbor’s dog and blame it on Slayer.

Visit the Inter-National Day of Slayer website for more information!

Where to purchase Slayer albums

If you don’t already have at least one Slayer album in your collection, purchase from amazon.com:

• Slayer – Haunting the Chapel (review)
• Slayer – Show No Mercy – (review)
• Slayer – Hell Awaits – (review)
• Slayer – Reign in Blood – (review)
• Slayer – South of Heaven – (review)
• Slayer – Seasons in the Abyss – (review)
• Slayer – Decade of Aggression – (review)

Follow us on Social Networks

• Facebook: International Day of Slayer
• Last.fm: National Day of Slayer
• MySpace: National Day of Slayer
• Twitter: NatlDayOfSlayer
• YouTube: National Day of Slayer

Relevant Artists

If you like Slayer, also try:

• Massacra
• Mortuary
• Sepultura
• Bathory
• Vader

Thanks for reading!

– Inter-National Day of Slayer team

Here’s a sampling from his black metal project (1996-2007) called Benighted Leams:

Sounds like a Manes/Fester crossover.

Someone else pointed out what we know — mass culture is a product disguised as individual self-expression:

In the sphere of luxury production, to which popular music belongs and in which no necessities of life are immediately involved, while, at the same time, the residues of individualism are most alive there in the form of ideological categories such as taste and free choice, it is imperative to hide standardization. The “backwardness” of musical mass production, the fact that it is still on a handicraft level and not literally an industrial one, conforms perfectly to that necessity which is essential from the viewpoint of cultural big business. If the individual handicraft elements of popular music were abolished altogether, a synthetic means of hiding standardization would have to be evolved. Its elements are even now in existence.

The necessary correlate of musical standardization is pseudo-individualization. By pseudo-individualization we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardization itself. Standardization of song hits keeps the customers in line by doing their listening for them, as it were. Pseudo-individualization, for its part, keeps them in line by making them forget that what they listen to is already listened to for them, or “pre-digested”.

The most drastic example of standardization of presumably individualized features is to be found in so-called improvisations. Even though jazz musicians still improvise in practice, their improvisations have become so “normalized” as to enable a whole terminology to be developed to express the standard devices of individualization: a terminology which in turn is ballyhooed by jazz publicity agents to foster the myth of pioneer artisanship and at the same time flatter the fans by apparently allowing them to peep behind the curtain and get the inside story. This pseudo-individualization is prescribed by the standardization of the framework. The latter is so rigid that the freedom it allows for any sort of improvisation is severely delimited. Improvisations — passages where spontaneous action of individuals is permitted (“Swing it boys”) — are confined within the walls of the harmonic and metric scheme. In a great many cases, such as the “break” of pre-swing jazz, the musical function of the improvised detail is determined completely by the scheme: the break can be nothing other than a disguised cadence. Here, very few possibilities for actual improvisation remain, due to the necessity of merely melodically circumscribing the same underlying harmonic functions. Since these possibilities were very quickly exhausted, stereotyping of improvisatory details speedily occurred. Thus, standardization of the norm enhances in a purely technical way standardization of its own deviation — pseudo-individualization. – Theodor Adorno, On Popular Music

This doubly applies to nu-metal. The whole essay is worth reading.

I’m almost too cynical to think the news is anything but press releases, yet:

Donald Tardy has two passions.

His music – he’s the drummer for the death-metal band Obituary. And his cats – more than 140 of them.

They live in woods, behind shopping plazas and in dumpsters. They scrounge for food, scavenging rodents and trash, and fend off raccoons.

They’re feral cats, and according to the Humane Society of Tampa Bay, they’re among an estimated 200,000 roaming Hillsborough County.

Tardy tends to more than 20 colonies, some with as few as two cats, others with nearly 30. He carefully protects their locations; some people are capable of unimaginable cruelty, while others find colonies a convenient place to dump unwanted cats. Every day he checks on “my gang,” feeding the cats and, when necessary, getting them veterinary care. – TBO

This makes me feel better about the time I went on a bender and re-purchased all those old early 1990s albums (and the Judas Priest catalog up through 2004). Some things just get better with time.