#7: Dutty jungle riddims

Gothzilla; Vincent Van Sloth; Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats; Love is a Fist; Greetings From Data Lake

Jul 11, 2020

This posted on Thursday, but didn’t go out to the entire list because I’m dumb. Apologies if you’re getting it twice.

Greetings from Los Angeles County, home to the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States! Second place? My former home of Cook County, Illinois! Harris County, where I grew up, is No. 10! What a shitshow. I have nothing of value to add about how badly we have screwed ourselves, so I’ll just get on with the nonsense.

Gothzilla

Some names are so groan-inducingly obvious that they make me suspicious. How haven’t they already been used? How haven’t I already seen them? That’s the case with Gothzilla, a portmanteau of such low-hanging fruit that you hesitate to pick it, in case it’s some kind of trap. But no, here we are: Gothzilla, from Scotland. Despite their goofy name, they appear bereft of irony, with appropriately goth song titles like “The Dark is Rising,” “The Edge of Forever,” “Army of Angels,” and “Today is a Good Day to Die.” Singer Tim Jarvis has a Peter Murphy-esque croon and looks like Frank Black wearing a goth SS uniform. In short, Gothzilla’s bona fides check out, so why on Earth did they pick a name that sounds like a joke from SNL circa 1997? Even Azrael Abyss would haven chosen something less dumb.

Vincent Van Sloth

Do you mispronounce Vincent van Gogh’s name? Probably. I learned that from Leonard Nimoy. In my senior year art-history class, we watched some special about van Gogh that he hosted. Nimoy pronounced it “van KHOKH.” I remember nothing else from the video, which would disappoint Nimoy, who performed a one-man show about the renowned artist.

I bring it up to help explain why the otherwise dunderheaded name Vincent Van Sloth makes a certain amount of sense, as “sloth” is a near rhyme for “khokh.” And a near rhyme is the best you’re gonna get from this British DJ who rolls with Off Me Nut Records, home to artists like Superior Cornrows, Christopher Rave, Yeahhbuzz, and BNB alumni Spongebob Squarewave. 2015’s Clash of the Amens features “6 rinsers for the party ’ere,” says Off Me Nut, adding that Van Sloth “is dishing out the dutty jungle riddims.” I feel like Clark Griswold checking into a British hotel.

Vincent Van Sloth hopped to Suck Puck Recordz for this year’s “I Bleed Metal,” which begins like Ministry circa The Land of Rape and Honey before segueing into banging, perhaps dutty, jungle riddims. It sounds like the kind of thing that requires Al Jourgensen levels of stimulants to enjoy.

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats

Back in the Year in Band Name days, I used to have a category called Such And Such & The So And Sos, for precisely these kinds of names. Cornelius Asperger and the Bi-Curious Unicorns. Bonghit Billy and the Ass-Crack Tassles. Ellen and the Degenerates. Kevin Troy Boy Toy and the Almost Virgins Pajama Party. You get the idea. This British band has apparently be around since 2009, playing a decidedly vintage strain of heavy metal that would’ve perfectly soundtracked a few keggers at the moontower. Although the link is dead, Wikipedia notes the band also goes by the classy moniker The Sharon Tate Experience, but if you’re curious about their actual name, the site has details:

The band’s name was taken from Rusty Day, the singer of Cactus, who later had a band called Uncle Acid And The Permanent Damage Band. Uncle Acid was originally the otherwise-anonymous frontman, although he has since changed his stage name to K.R. Starrs and now views the band members collectively as being “Uncle Acid.”

This is where my anti-rockstar punk-rock upbringing prejudices me, because my mind immediately plays out this scene: “Oy, cunts,” I imagine Starrs saying to his bandmates. “I’m not Uncle Acid anymore. I’m K.R. Starrs. You lot are Uncle Acid. Now sod off!” Then I picture the other members rolling their eyes. I’m probably projecting, but the current lineup features guys with names like Jon Rice and Justin Smith, so maybe not.

Love is a Fist

Google “love is a fist” looking for the NYC-based sextet, and you’ll get pages upon pages of results about Mr. Bungle. Specifically the song “Love is a Fist,” from the band’s characteristically schizophrenic 1991 debut. (For those not aware, Mr. Bungle is best known as a side project for Faith No More frontman Mike Patton, though he was actually in Mr. Bungle first.) There isn’t much to the lyrics, which open with “Clenched emotions / ’Round my ween / Feel my heart beat / Off and your head in.” If you find that inscrutable, the Genius helpfully explains:

Ohhhhh, that ween. Thank you, I’ll use that link to share with my followers:

Make sure to follow @Kyle_Ryan for this kind of breaking news.

Google also serves up results for Love Fist, “a fictional Scottish heavy metal band prominently featured in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.” Sounds pretty tame for GTA. “The band is comprised of Jezz Torrent (“Jizz” if said with a Scottish accent, a slang term for semen) and Willy, Dick, and Percy (all slang terms for the penis).” There we go, right on brand.

Anyway, this Love is a Fist plays a surprisingly slick blend of ska, hip-hop, and soul. The deeply earnest songs have titles like “Live On (Through Every Song),” “Rebel Music,” “It’s All Love,” “We Want Justice” (written after the death of Eric Garner), and “Racist World.” “Can’t think straight / I can’t sit straight in a racist world,” sings frontman Sheldon Sneed. The band has released two EPs and is working on its full-length debut, which includes an updated version of “We Want Justice.” Love is a Fist released an unfinished version of the song during the George Floyd protests last month, accompanied by a nearly nine-minute video that made me feel profoundly sad. But hey, hey! Silly band names!

Greetings From Data Lake

Are you familiar with a data lake? Until five minutes ago, I was not. Says Wikipedia: “A data lake is a system or repository of data stored in its natural/raw format, usually object blobs or files.” (So “object blobs” is a technical term, is it?) If you’re concerned about data siloing, and who isn’t, you’ll be happy to hear that a 2014 whitepaper from PricewaterhouseCoopers suggested that data lakes could put an end to siloing. In our lifetime! Probably because blobs are the opposite of silos.

Sending you a postcard from this raw-data oasis is Greetings From Data Lake, a.k.a. Janet Morgan, whom I hope you recognize from the mighty Channels. That was her band with husband—and Kyle Ryan Hero—J. Robbins (Jawbox/Burning Airlines/etc.) and powerhouse drummer Darren Zentek of Kerosene 454. Channels fell very much in line with Robbins’ previous outfits—Waiting for the Next End of the World is excellent, particularly standout track “Chivaree”—which also fit the indie rock Morgan played in her native England. But as the bio for Greetings From Data Lake notes, that stuff “has given way to her love of minimalist electronica.” I have no data to back up this assertion, but I feel like that’s a common transition for lifelong rockers. Or maybe I’m just thinking of Fugazi’s “Target,” where Guy Picciotto sings, “I realize that I hate the sound of guitars.”

Maybe Morgan still loves the sound of guitars. The staticky washes and skittering beats of “Home Sweet Home” suit the moniker of her solo project, though.

POST-SCRIPTS

I never got into Mr. Bungle, though my pal Darwin—mentioned in BNB #2.1—saw them when we were in high school. Mr. Bungle came out, played like three songs, then Mike Patton hit a bouncer with a mic stand and was promptly arrested. The show was infamous in Houston, up there with the time Billy Corgan stormed off stage because a shoe hit him in the head. That one I saw, and it was the first time I thought, “That Billy Corgan guy seems like a dick.” Wouldn’t be the last!
A couple of weeks ago I received my Never Not Funny T-shirt for being a “platinum” subscriber, because we live large at BNB. (I believe I now have three different Never Not Funny shirts, making podcast shirts the new band shirts.) Included with it was a postcard advertising something called Mock Band Tees. They’re shirts for fake bands and tours, like Flaccid Steel’s 1980 “This Never Happens” tour. It’s a funny idea and executed well. Some of the shirts include fake press clippings, like the one for Arial and the Bad Fonts, which mentions their acrimonious breakup. “The Bad Fonts continued touring sans Arial, and still appear everywhere.” Some names I liked from the list: JK and the Mixed Signals, Wolf Something, and Blizzard Rain.
Last issue I sang the praises of Norway’s Spielbergs—check out “Bad Friend” if you haven’t yet—and only a couple weeks later my pal Josh Modell sends me a press release for Speelburg, an electro-pop artist from Los Angeles. Still no Señor Spielbergo, though.