Thursday, March 18, 2010

Exclusivos - Out of a Promising Start

Well, the response the first time around was pretty enthusiastic, so I'm happy to say that the third official MPAE blog release is this double-disc collection of outtakes, rarities and live recordings by one of the most original bands you've never heard of, The Exclusivos.

Nef says, "It took me nearly six months to culminate but here you go. It's all of our music aside from what's already posted. It's 31 songs, all in chronological order. You pretty much get to hear us evolve from start to finish. The compilation ends with stuff we demoed last year. There are also some surprises at the beginning and end of some of the material. There are Instrumentals on there as well."

Admittedly, most of these recordings are pretty damn rough, but, chances are, if you're coming to this blog you're not an audiophile anyway. If you haven't heard The Exclusivos yet, I highly recommend that you begin with the first release I posted, and then come back here after you're completely hooked.

Now bask in the strangeness.

Exclusivos
Out of a Promising Start MP3
(MPAE)
2010

Disc 1:
(note: songs that are linked can be downloaded as samples)
01. Madness (Intro)
02. Year 3000
03. Charlie
04. Oh No
05. Summer of Fantasy
06. Fargunstein (Original)
07. Sad Ending (Original)
08. Alcoholism
09. Losing (Original)
10. Make Believe
11. Rocket (Original)
12. Losing (Revisited)
13. Micheal 5 (instrumental)
14. Micheal 6 (instrumental)
15. The Machinist (Original)
16. Forces Unknown (Original)


Disc 2:

(note: songs that are linked can be downloaded as samples)
01. Oh No! (live '05)
02. Rocket (live '05)
03. Fargunstein (live '05)
04. Break Free
05. Ballad of Fred (Original)
06. Hello
07. Faster
08. She Never Liked Me Anyway
09. Rocket (Revisited)
10. Losing (Let The Child Cry Version)
11. Tradition (Demo)
12. Acoustic Demo #1 '08
13. Acoustic Demo #2 '08
14. Demo #1 09
15. Demo #2 09





Thursday, March 11, 2010

Ultramundane - A Kingdom at Birth

I'm very pleased to announce that Shaadie Khoury, the brain behind Ultramundane, has given me permission to post the entire Ultramundane discography.

I discovered the band while writing my series on Middle Eastern Black Metal for Bigtakeover.com. You can read the entries on Ultramundane here and here.

This was their first album. From what I can tell, the band was a side-project of sorts of Egyptian black metal band, Oziris. While there are two very nasty lo-fi black metal tracks on this album, the other five tracks are dark, psychedelic instrumentals, kind of like Mogwai. It was a great start to what would become a great band, although after this, they'd become an electronic darkwave/ambient band with drummer Shaadie Khoury at the helm.

The images and music were uploaded with Shaadie Khoury's full consent. Thank you, Shaadie!

Ultramundane
A Kingdom at Birth CD?/MP3
(Ultramundane?)
1998


Sample tracks:

Sworn Revenge

Stepped Into Heaven



Thursday, March 4, 2010

Pete-less - Pete-less

Here's a band John, from ULTRABASTARD!, was in over 10 years ago. From what I remember, the band had another name and a proper singer until John was looking at their website one day and he saw something saying that the singer, Pete, had quit to start another band. Apparently, Pete forgot to tell his bandmates. John was playing bass, so out of necessity, he became the vocalist and they changed their name to Pete-less.

Sonically, I think the band is more "grunge" than anything - not like Pearl Jam mind you - but that style of metalized punk that really doesn't have any other name. Between Barbara's heavy guitar chops, Joe's powerful drumming and John's shouted vocals, it has a very late '80s/early '90s Northwestern US sound.

Some words from John:

"It's 33 minutes, 11 songs and aside from the shitty vocals, it still rocks after all these years!! We shoulda been contenders! 'When Illumination Comes' was a 10 minute jam with a lot of good riffs that I whittled down to 2 minutes. Half the songs were about Joe's breakup with his girlfriend including '3 West' which was named after the psych wing he was in because of depression. 'Tired' was a fuck you to everyone who said we were this or that."

The images and music were uploaded with John Ulmer's full consent. Thank you, John!

Pete-less
Pete-less CD
(Pete-less)
1999


Sample tracks:

Squeezed-out

When Illumination Comes

Bradees