EARACHE records
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thru' some of my early days...... -
The Earache label in the late '80's and early '90's consolidated the worldwide Death/Grindcore Metal movement into one cohesive whole for a stream of 99 totally classic records reaching its peak with Bolt Thrower's IV Crusade, Carcass' Necroticism, Entombed's Clandestine and Cathedral's Ethereal Mirror (all released 1991-93 with 1992 being an especially fine year) until devolving into a morass of faceless releases of mediocre-to-bad hardcore, "industrial" and "techno." The grand announcement (in early 1997) that Earache had just signed the band led by Prodigy's GUITAR player is just about the final nail in this once mighty label's coffin. Regardless of your feelings about Death Metal (or Metal for that matter), flagship Napalm Death alone through it's branching out into Godflesh, Carcass, Cathedral, and Scorn have exerted an inmeasurable amount of influence in the world of powerful and extreme loud musics of all genres
Earache Records always had the coolest logo- spiky and vaguely hardcore-ish like an over-xeroxed photograph, yet streamlined in a superstar Metal way, it holds all these releases together as a symbol of goofball extremity and pseudo-satanic biker tatoo dread. Emerging out of the "crossover" phase of hardcore punk, when the long-hair fury and velocity of speed metal started to seem most attractive to scuzzy punk bands, Earache's first batch of releases set up the Napalm Death dynasty and its first diversion into Unseen Terror and Carcass. Morbid Angel comes in soon after with its trend-setting Altars of Madness album as Earache starts scouring the globe for extreme stupidity of all types, and lands in Tampa Florida's Morrisound studios, the vatican of moronic metal. Next stop is Sweden, as Entombed's Left Hand Path sounds the opening shot of the Scandinavian metal onslaught that still hasn't abated. Add the mighty Bolt Thrower to the mix and the lineup is untouchable. In the early nineties no one was louder, faster or dumber than Earache's roster. Besides, their CD's usually have the lyrics printed, and even if you take Carcass out, Earache's lyrics can't be topped for creative language mangling and confusion. -
NAPALM DEATH!!
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Earache- the first 99 releases
MOSH 1 The Accused The Return Of Martha Splatterhead
MOSH 2 Heresyconcrete Sox split
[color=red]MOSH 3 Napalm Death Scum [/color]
MOSH 4 Unseen Terror Human Error
MOSH 5 Spazztic Blurr Befo Da Awbum
MOSH 6 Carcass Reek Of Putrefaction
MOSH 7 O.L.D. Old Lady Drivers
MOSH 8 Napalm Death From Enslavement To Obliteration
MOSH 9 Intense Degree War In my head
MOSH 10 Sore Throat Disgrace To The Corpse Of Sid
MOSH 11 Morbid Angel Altars Of Madness
MOSH 12 Grindcrusher compilation
MOSH 13 Bolt Thrower realm Of Chaos
MOSH 14 Napalm Death Mentally Murdered EP
MOSH 15 GODFLESH Streetcleaner
MOSH 16 TERRORIZER World Downfall
MOSH 17 Filthy Christians Mean
MOSH 18 Carcass Symphonies Of Sickness
MOSH 19 Napalm Death Harmony Corruption
MOSH 20 Godflesh Godflesh
MOSH 21 Entombed Left Hand Path
MOSH 22 Hellbastard Natural Order
MOSH 23 Nocturnus The Key
MOSH 24 Napalm Death Suffer The Children EP
MOSH 25 Lawnmower Deth Ooh Crickey It's...
MOSH 26 Sweet Tooth Soft White Underbelly EP
MOSH 27 Massacre From Beyond
MOSH 28 Naked City Torture Garden
MOSH 29 Bolt Thrower War Master
MOSH 30 Godflesh Slavestate EP
MOSH 31 Morbid Angel Blessed Are The Sick
MOSH 32 Godflesh Pure
MOSH 33 Bolt Thrower Cenotaph EP
MOSH 34 Mighty Force Dive
MOSH 35 Grindcrusher II compilation
MOSH 36 Fudge Tunnel Hate Songs In E Minor
MOSH 37 Entombed Clandestine
MOSH 38 Entombed Crawl EP
MOSH 39 Lawnmower Deth Kids In America EP
MOSH 40 Cathedral Soul Sacrifice EP
MOSH 41 O.L.D. Lo Flux Tube
MOSH 42 Carcass Necroticism - Descanting The Insalubrious
MOSH 43 Cathedral Forest Of Equilibrium
MOSH 44 Confessor Condemned
MOSH 45 Painkiller Guts Of A Virgin
MOSH 46 Napalm Death Mass Appeal Madness EP
MOSH 47 Godflesh Slateman EP
MOSH 48 Morbid Angel Abominations Of Desolation
MOSH 49 Carcass Tools Of The Trade EP
MOSH 50 EARPLUGGED THE VIDEOS (video)
MOSH 51 Napalm Death Death By Manipulation EP
MOSH 52 Entombed Stranger Aeons EP
MOSH 53 Napalm Death Utopia Banished
MOSH 54 Scorn Vae Solis
MOSH 55 Nocturnus Thresholds
MOSH 56 Godflesh Cold World EP
MOSH 57 Fudge Tunnel Teeth EP
MOSH 58 Confessor Condemned EP
MOSH 59 Vader The Ultimate Incantation
MOSH 60 Massacre Inhuman Conditions EP
MOSH 61 Scorn Lick Forever Dog EP
MOSH 62 Painkiller Buried Secrets
MOSH 63 Gods Of Grind compilation
MOSH 64 Fudge Tunnel Creep Diets
MOSH 65 Napalm Death The World Keeps Turning EP
MOSH 66 Pitch Shifter Submit
MOSH 67 Napalm Death Live At Salisbury
MOSH 68 Not released - would have been a SORE THROAT album
MOSH 69 Brutal Truth Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses
MOSH 70 Bolt Thrower The IV Crusade
MOSH 71 Cadaver In Pains
MOSH 72 Lawnmower Deth Return Of The Fabulous Metal Bozo Clowns
MOSH 73 Bolt Thrower Spearhead EP
MOSH 74 Clutch Passive Restraints EP
MOSH 75 Pitch Shifter Desensitized
MOSH 76 Naive Naive
MOSH 77 Cathedral The Ethereal Mirror
MOSH 78 Scorn Deliverance EP
MOSH 79 Sleep Sleeps Holy Mountain
MOSH 80 Brutal Truth Ill Neglect EP
MOSH 81 Morbid Angel Covenant
MOSH 82 Entombed Wolverine Blues
MOSH 83 Extreme Noise Terror Retrobution
MOSH 84 Brutal Truth Perpetual Conversion EP
MOSH 85 Godflesh Selfless
MOSH 86 OLD The Musical Dimensions Of Sleastak
MOSH 87 Six Yard Box Imagination Is Greater Than Knowledge
MOSH 88 Meathook Seed Embedded
MOSH 89 Blood From The Soul To Spite The Gland That Bleeds
MOSH 90 CORPORATE ROCK WARS - THE VIDEO
MOSH 91 Scorn Colossus
MOSH 92 Napalm Death Nazi Punks Fuck Off EP
MOSH 93 Scorn White Irises Blind EP
MOSH 94 Entombed Hollowman EP
MOSH 95 Pitch Shifter The Remix War
MOSH 96 Massacre Promise
MOSH 97 Carcass Heartwork
MOSH 98 Lawnmower Deth Billy
MOSH 99 Fudge Tunnel In A Word...
the ones in color are the ones i have (or at least use to have
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when i bought cassettes... nuts.. that's a long time ago!
i had very few...
mostly Napalm Death, Godflesh and Carcass
i don't even have a cassette player anymore -
argh.. double post!
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MOSH 6 Carcass Reek Of Putrefaction (198
Masterful debut from Bill Steer's post Napalm group. It's interesting to note how dissatisfied they are (and were even back then) with the recording of this. The most recent reissue CD's credits say "Initially recorded and ruined by Mike 'it up wrongly' Ivory." Carcass always seemed extremely proud of their appeal to the non-Metal crowd-yet they slowly devolved into a fist-pumping straight metal band (with vomit vocals) churning out recycled Thin Lizzy and U.F.O. riffs. Did it ever occur to them that the muddy blur of sound on their first album is what the non-metal crowd found most appealing? The NWOBHM/Venom metal riffs are already here in the intros to just about every song, but those retching demon vocals drown any sense of metal musicality you might hope for as each song melts into massive hairballs of distortion. The death metal crowd loved them, though, especially as they grew more "technical," even gaining support from the mainstream metal press with Heartwork and staying on the good side of the underground crowd that accused Entombed of selling out with Wolverine Blues. Their gore-worshipping artwork (too gruesome to reissue on CD as it first appeared on the LP) and their extended incomprehensible song titles/lyrics have influenced many in the death metal, grindcore, industrial and noise world. Here's a sample of their lyrical skills:
Parasitic carnivorous carrion, your gastrointestinal tract, your prey's cremator
Bloody neo-cannibalistic, bloodfeed masticator
Rigor sanguined fleshfeast, gourging on festered entrails and warm meat
Devouring cold offal, necro-sentient mortis feed
Or how about:
Mucopurulent organs digested in sepsis
Mucolysifying, rancidifying as you eat your own cysts
Putrefying your pyorrhoea - infested corpse excretes away
Expelling pyuria and septic goitrous membrane -
MOSH 11 Morbid Angel Altars Of Madness (1989)
Looking like they got lost on the way to a Monsters of Rock Halloween party these satanic clowns never made a better album than this. Quite possibly the best to come out of Morrisound (along with Monstrosity's Imperial Doom on Nuclear Blast) this creepy excursion into the minds of barely grown men grasping onto their pre-adolescence is a masterpiece of spastic metal. Their cod-piece collection might have gotten more interesting over the years but their music hasn't. Put this up against Merzbow's (roughly contemporaneous) Batz-Tou-tai and see which clears the room fastest. I've always disliked the drum sounds on Morrisound's product but Pete Sandoval, one of the many competing "fastest drummer in the world" title-holders, surmounts weak sonics with sheer insane speed. Fine detailed color cover artwork by Dan Seagrave, whose artwork would also grace Entombed and Nocturnus and many other Earache releases. Dan's style can best be compared to the sort of naive demon warrior pencil drawings you used to find on the margins of high school text books. Except Dan has the patience to fill a large area of his drawings with fine intricate anal retentive detail. This album also adds to the Earache roster another Grindcore trademark- apparently sincere non-ironic satanism. Lyrical highlights include incantation of demons in an alien Lovecraftian tongue, and much Christian-bashing. "Killer." -
MOSH 12 Grindcrusher Compilation (1989)
A genre-defining compilation. All the Earache luminaries are here plus assorted related bands. Unlike most of the Earche LP's of this era (especially MOSH 11 and 13) the artwork on this does not scream "metal" in any way- mostly it makes me think of Big Black's big font fetish (the Racer X EP especially) but with a more dayglo palette. Without the dungeons and demons imagery this release more than any other introduces "grindcore" as a genre onto itself, beyond Metal, beyond Hardcore, beyond Industrial, beyond music- completely alien, drug-fueled, mechanical, brutal and uncompromising, a true sound for its age. If you can only buy one Earache album...
the very best compil....dunno where mine went,not sure if a friend nicked it or i lost it..... -
MOSH 15 Godflesh Streetcleaner (1989)
Barfing vocals appear on this second album from Justin Broadrick's group, and no one did them better than Godflesh. Drum machines in a metal context work best when they are slowed down- and some of the rhythms here are unbelievably sludgy and claustrophobic. Nothing compares except Swans' Cop LP- but they had a real drummer that slightly humanized and warmed (so to speak) their sound. Everything you could hope for in a mechanized death metal noise-rock fusion can be found on this release. Could have been culled down to half the album's length, for a total masterpiece of gloomy icy atmosphere. As it is, it's just exhausting and more than a little boring after repeated listens. Inspired countless imitators (Earache even signed one of them- Pitchshifter) who just don't measure up to the nasty inhuman vibe of this and scattered parts of Godflesh's successive career. -
MOSH 79 Sleep Sleep's Holy Mountain (1992)
Stoner Slo-Core slackers overselling themselves to the Sabbath crowd by aping just about every Iommi riff they could manage to remember through that reefer haze that clouds their brains. More metallic than the smart-guy conceptual Melvins/Swans hybrid of their debut (not on Earache) this is one of the better one-shot Earache releases. Their conceptual edge remains in their deja vu-inducing note-by-note appropriation of Sabbath riffs and melodies. That punk/whatever ironic edge is the only thing that separates them from similarly conceived Ozzy worshipping "Doom" acts on the Hellhound label. But unlike many of those acts, this is actually pretty listenable and competently produced and recorded, with the guitar sounding especially tasty. -
Sigh. When I was younger, I'd always wanted to buy cassettes, and though IT WAS ONLY PRICED AT FIVE DOLLARS EACH [so cheap now eh!], $5 was a great sum of money to me...Originally posted by the Bear:when i bought cassettes... nuts.. that's a long time ago!
i had very few...
mostly Napalm Death, Godflesh and Carcass
i don't even have a cassette player anymore
Then now, $25 is a big big sum of money to me when $5 is nothing...
Say, who here finds CDs too expensive nowadays?