Annihilator - Total Annihilation

Annihilator have been on of my favourite bands for years, ever since I picked up their King Of The Kill album from the £1 bin at Our Price records in my hometown of Fleet. Yes, it was that long ago the Our Price was still called Our Price, before it became the ill-fated, stock-free Virgin V-Shop (which was possibly the most retarded idea ever, why go to a shop where you have to order everything off the internet if you can order it off the internet from home and it'll cost less?).

Anyways, Annihilator are an oldschool thrash band from Canada. Their older stuff was quite traditional thrash but with some quirky/comedy moments and some really odd riffs thrown in. I'd still say Annihilator main man Jeff Waters is one of my favourite guitarists, perhaps 2nd only to the mighty Jeff Loomis of Nevermore. Hopefully one day their powers will combine in a dual Jeff shred attack, but anyways I digress.

Annihilator have had a lot of different lineups over the last 26 years, with Waters remaining the only constant member. The most noticeable of these have been the succession of vocalists. My personal favourite was Joe Comeau who sang on the Carnival Diablos and Waking The Fury albums. I was not keen on current vocalist Dave Padden at first, though his style has grown on me over the last 4 albums (well 3 of them anyways, didn't get on with Metal at all!).

Today's offering is a best of type compilation Annihilator have recently released through Earache Records for free download. There is a good mix of tracks from throughout most of their career, though there seems to be a lack of tracks from their first few albums, perhaps due to licensing issues with Roadrunner Records who released them originally. Stand out tracks for me are Ultra Motion, Battered and King Of The Kill. Slightly disappointed none of my favourite Annihilator tracks are on there (Kraf Dinner, The Perfect Virus, Evil Appetite (Don't Bother Me), Annihilator (King of the Kill version), Knight Jumps Queen), but I do always have obscure tastes.

320Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Rapidshare (requires email address for download)

Annihilator on Myspace
Annihilator official site

GrooveMonsteR - Rock Was Dead

GrooveMonsteR were a comedy stoner rock band from Brighton in the UK. For a number of years they made audiences all over Brighton laugh their asses off whilst remaining completely unable to stand still and look miserable, as stoner rock fans ought to do. GrooveMonsteR supply solid rock grooves with amusing and comical lyrics about all kinds of things over the top. Such classics as Rocket Mice and Twist Your Beard always get a great crowd reaction.

Rock Was Dead is a compilation of all the tracks GrooveMonsteR ever recorded for their various demo releases. This compilation was released online as a warm-up for what was probably the
last ever GrooveMonsteR show at Hydrant in Brighton on the 22nd August 2010, with support from my band Funeral Hag. If you like them, a video of the show and a mockumentary about GrooveMonsteR are currently in production, see the GrooveMonsteR Reunion Facebook group for details. There are also live recordings of both sets which may or may not be released to the internets at some point...

Here's a video I took of them playing Drunken Master:



320Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Megaupload
WAV (CD Quality) via HTTP from Megaupload

GrooveMonsteR on Myspace
GrooveMonsteR Reunion Facebook Group

Wiht - Wiht

Wiht are an instrumental stoner doom band from Leeds in the UK. Whilst somewhat reminiscent of other instrumental stoner bands like Karma To Burn and Sons Of Alpha Centauri, Wiht's sound is quite a bit heavier than either of those and more doomy in pace. Their material works well as instrumental, with a massive guitar tone that must have taken a lot of layers to create. It's not all heavy grooves, there are some nice chilled out droney and almost ambient sections. Well worth a listen, and as always if you like it go buy it! £4 on CD from their Myspazz, not bad for >40 minutes of kickass stoner doom.

256Kbps MP3 via HTTP from Mediafire.com
http://www.mediafire.com/?gqzrghymtor
http://www.mediafire.com/?uzznd1jjh2j

Wiht on Myspace

Mother Susurrus - Mother Susurrus

Mother Susurrus are a doom/sludge band from Finland. Their sound is quite droney and sludgey, heavy yet with plenty of melody as well. Beautifully bleak and very well crafted, the EP rises and falls like post rock but never quite drops below a doomy level of heaviness and sludge. There are no clean guitars here! This EP consists of 2 tracks, Whoremonger and Apocatastasis, totalling 32:26 of awesome doominess.

VBR (~250Kbps) MP3 via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com
FLAC via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com
ALAC via HTTP from Mothersusurrus.com

Mother Susurrus on Myspace
Mother Susurrus offical website

Hesper Payne - Unclean Rituals

Hesper Payne are a Lovecraft inspired doom band from Newcastle-Upon-Tyne in the UK. I posted their Titans Of The North Sea EP a while ago, which was rather good. Now they're back with a new album, Unclean Rituals, which continues with their awesome brand of bleak, detuned doom with death metal style vocals. I liked it so much I had to buy the CD, which came with an ominous note I shall now transcribe for your reading pleasure (punctuation mostly added by me for ease of reading):

Monty!

Oh gods. The horror!
They know where I am. I asked the wrong questions, now I hear their mocking cry, further than the distant starts, closer than the thickness of a shadow. Guard this artifact well lest they come for you.

OH GODS, I HEAR THEM AT THE WINDOW!

HP.

Obviously they've been reading a lot of Lovecraft, which is something I always mean to do. Go check them out!

Various formats including 320Kbps MP3 and FLAC from Bandcamp

Hesper Payne on Myspace
Hesperpayne.com

Beware! The Gelatinous Gloop

Beware! The Gelatinous Gloop is a compilation of doom and sluge metal from Exhilarate Records. There's some great stuff on here, including tracks from my band Funeral Hag and fellow Brighton doomsters Enos and Dopefight. The download is split into two parts, so make sure you grab both so you get all 22 bands and 2 hours 25 minutes of doom!

Tracklist as follows:

Part 1 – Tracks 1-11

01. Ophis ‘The Halls of Sorrow’
02. Hiram ‘Peering Over the Shoulder of Admiral Piri-Reis’
03. The Machete Massacre ‘Kingdom of Sin’
04. Bitterdusk ‘Amanecer De La Galaxi’
05. Fall of Empyrean ‘In the Shadows of the Sun’
06. Funeral Hag ‘Nellie Longarms’
07. Zatokrev ‘Story of a Thousand’
08. Enos ‘Back to Earth’
09. Grief’s Exquisite Veil ‘Sleep’s Caress’
10. Hopkins ‘Permutations’
11. Dopefight ‘Nob.Nod.Noi’

Part 2 – Tracks 12-22

12. Sobre Nocturne ‘Shattered Fields’
13. Tovarish ‘Laika’
14. Blame Keiko ‘Everything & Nothing’
15. The Way of Purity ‘Sinner’
16. Circus of Damnation ‘In Speciem Cadaveris’
17. Plaguewitch ‘Aarka’
18. John Halifax ‘Robust’
19. Merciless Precision ‘Suffer (live at the Zeneth)’
20. Normalman ‘Flamingo Land’
21. Drug Honkey ‘The Others’
22. Brown & Benbow ‘Dog Waste’

Various bitrates MP3 download via HTTP from Mediafire
Part 1
Part 2

Exhilarate Records Blogspot

Enos - Chapter 1

Right, not done an update for ages because I'm a massive twat! I have amassed quite a collection of links for you however, so I shall endeavour to keep the updates reasonably regular in future. After all, anyone who's loyal enough a reader to still be reading is bound to be itching for a fix of new free music by now!

This time I shall be shamelessly promoting my mates' band's album! Enos are a Brighton doom band mixing elements of doom, stoner, prog and space rock. Their first album was a long time in the making and mixing drove their front-man to despair. Fortunately for us he persevered and we get served up these 5 tracks of psychedelic doom for free! There's also a great comic book as a PDF with the album, which some of you may recognise from one of Chris' other projects Thee Big Black, a Brighton based fanzine, webzine, forum and promotions group for all things stoner, doom, drone, sludge and anything else somone feels like contributing. Well worth a read/listen so check 'em out!

320Kbps MP3 via HTTP from theebigblack.com

Enos on Myspace