Frandy- Relief (2011)

I like hardcore. I particularly like the darker side of hardcore, hardcore that flirts with metal and plays footsie with sludge. I like Cursed and Engineer and Achilles. A lot. And because I like all of that I like Frandy.

Oh, and Frandy is from Flint, MI, the most dangerous city in America. 

Frandy on last.fm

(None of their stuff is on YouTube. But this is the cover of the EP. It's creepy.)

Get it here. You can download the EP for free from Frandy's Bandcamp. Do it.

The Men- Immaculada (2010)

Immaculada is one of my better finds of late, really digging it. This sinus infection I have is less awesome, however. The Men are a noise rock band from Brooklyn, NY. I don't think noise rock quite captures their sound, but certainly if The Men have an overarching philosophy it's something along the lines of "if it's noisy and loud, we're into it." There's a good bit of variance from track to track, but here's some of the stuff I'm reminded of when listening to The Men: Black Flag, Dinosaur Jr., Bleach era Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, Bone Awl (that song kinda comes out of left field), Earth and perhaps less surprisingly, some of the Am Rep roster. So I guess that would make The Men a noise rock/punk/grunge/alternative/shoegaze/black metal/drone band. Yep, that sounds about right.

They also put out an album this year that I'm getting right now. If it rules anywhere near as much as this album I'll throw it up on the blog. 

The Men on last.fm



Get it here. (It's a .zip Blaine. You really need to find an .rar extractor)

Pneu- Highway To Health (2011)

Thanks to Jackson for the recommendation. This Tours, France duo stirs up a math-rock mixed drink that tastes like the noisy weirdness of Lightning Bolt and Hella at their catchiest, with perhaps a jigger of the heaviness of early Don Cab. Fun as all fuck. The best part is that excessive consumption won't result in alcohol poisoning! Oh, and there is a vocal cameo by Eugene Robinson of Oxbow. Yeah, I know, I made that same face when I first read that. Weird.

Pneu on last.fm

 Why is it my favorite tracks are never on YouTube? Anyway, this one rules too.


Get it here.

J Mascis- Several Shades of Why (2011)

It's supposed to rain all week. You're going to be needing this. J Mascis and an acoustic guitar with occasional accompaniment. I could tell you who J Mascis is, but you should already know that. So I won't.

J Mascis on last.fm



Get it here. Yes, the album title is in Spanish on the mediafire link, but the metadata for the tracks is correct.

Flourishing- The Sum of All Fossils (2011)

This is a tough one. Most of the reviews of Flourishing I have read describe them as a "progressive" or "experimental" death metal band. I feel like "progressive" and "experimental" don't really mean anything anymore, they're terms that get thrown around when it's too difficult to pigeonhole a band's sound and Flourishing's sound is certainly hard to pigeonhole. Death metal certainly applies, but that's only a small part of the story. On The Sum of All Fossils you'll hear death metal, grind, Coalesce-esque weirdness, noise rock and more. I know, it sounds terrible, but trust me. I generally hate genre-salad bands. Too often it ends up sounding like Between The Buried And Me, a bunch of riffs just strung together, but Flourishing somehow make it work. The best description I have read comes from their last.fm page: "The trio bulldozers through massive magnetic riffs, industrial mechanization, realms of dissonance and loose progressive abstraction creating an annihilating rhythmic bedlam." There, does that sound better?

This will most definitely make my top of 2011 list.

Flourishing on last.fm



Get it here.