Manic Scum - "Better Left Undead"

From the hills and polluted industrial wastelands of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia comes the debut ep from Manic Scum. Stalwart watchers of this blog may recall hearing these songs before, and you would be right. Manic Scum was started by Alex Depew and Neal Williams, who both were in Mental Shock with Dave Killebrew and myself, where these songs originated. Truth be told, the songs "Blood Junkies", and "Haunt Of Fear" were both written by me, and I also wrote the music to "Entombed For Eternity". The songs pretty much are the same as the older, very grimly produced (ok, no production at all) versions, which can be found here. If you already enjoy the Mental Shock versions of these songs, however, you will find subtle little changes in the executions of riffs, drum patterns, etc, and as a collaborator on these songs I have to admit that these versions are THE representations of how sick the M.S. stuff could have been. The recording is very brutal, everything is in your face and waiting to rip it off.  Fans of bands like Repulsion, Napalm Death, Autopsy, and most grind/death freaks will find something to like in these 11 and a half minutes.

Give Them Lead!

Year End Mega Post

Hello all. December comes and I wanna be a bear, one that sleeps in the woods. It gets cold in this house in the winter months, so I don't get on as much as I would like to, so here is some stuff I've been meaning to post for a while, at least until I get some more stuff to put up here.

Haunted Woods After Dark - "Curses And Invocations" - Some ambient shit I recorded a few years back. Some of this found its way into the first Yog Sothoth demo. Nothing amazing, if you're into black metal/horror soundtrack/ambient noise check it out. Here

Kutthroat Krew - "Amsterdam Or Bust" - Years ago there was this rap group straight outta Church Hill, Tennessee, and this was their only recorded output. these guys smoked a lot of weed, and recorded this. Definitely not for most of my regulars, but it makes me think of crazy fucking times. Once again, this is not metal, it's not punk, it's like nothing else I've ever posted on here. Full Disclosure: one of the songs is called "Balls In Yo Mouth".

You've been warned. Here

Hopefully those should tide you all over until we ring in the new year. I hope everyone has a great one. Stay Scummy.

To all those we lost this year, R.I.P. (I'll especially miss Ronnie James Dio, Frank Frazetta, Leslie Nielsen, Captain Beefheart, Dennis Hopper, Irvin Kershner, Peter Steele and Dick Giordano, all geniuses in their respective arts who will be missed.)

EDIT (1/10/11) - redeived another dcma complaint, and so removed the 3 soundtracks that were here. hope you got them before now. i'm pretty sure it wasn't balls in yo mouth that was infringing on copyrights.

Punchin' Judy - Regional Hardcore Legends.

You know, I've spent the past hour writing and re-writing this little introduction to a band that, if you live around here, should need no introduction. i tried to get my personal life caught up in telling about this band and realized i couldn't do that, because my personal life has nothing to do with this band, and vice-versa.

suffice to say, the first time i saw Punchin' Judy was one of the more violent local shows i can remember. actually, a lot of times i saw P.J. things seemed to get a little out of control. why was that? because, simply put, they were probably the best southern rock influenced new york hardcore band from bristol ever. they would start playing, they would be so loud, people would start slamming into each other and the walls...goddamn. they would play forever too, never letting up on any energy.
i saw them numerous times in kingsport and johnson city during '97-'99, and every time i almost got my ass stomped in a pit. at one point, during the first time i saw them, singer Jef Roberts asked the crowd to catch him when he jumped off the stage. when he jumped, his left foot, encased in size 12 steel-toed Doc Martens came crashing into the right side of my skull, almost blacking my eye and definantly hurting. i staggered but somehow kept going. later on i told him and we was very apologetic, and all i could say was "no problem!". Patrick, the bassist, worked at Back Door Records in Johnson City (which is sadly sadly missed) and was a font of information for all sorts of music. Rick, the guitarist, was an all around good guy who played fucking fierce and looked like he'd kick your ass at any time...the drummer, Scott, i never really talked to, but goddamn was he good.

Sadly, last year Jef was taken from us. He's left behind a regional music legacy that cannot be denied, and cannot be forgotten. Punchin' Judy, for a time, were the undisputed kings of Northeast Tennessee/Southwest Virginia Punk AND Metal..listen to these and you'll see why.

Punchin' Judy - "S/T" (1991?)

Punchin Judy - "Figure IV" CD (1998)

Punchin' Judy - "The Heel Sessions" E.P. (1998)

the picture above is from Punchin' Judy's Myspace page, which is full of good photos.

big thanks to my buddy Ben who ripped the "figure IV" cd at a whopping 320k! that one is a monster people, be warned. also thanks to Keenan, who lives all the way in Pittsburgh, for sending me copies of the s/t first album and the heel sessions ep, which was the first punchin' judy i ever owned. thanks for the help guys!

Monolith - Dawn

Finally, after years of knowing about this tape and hearing it while fucked up at friends house but never having a copy of it, i present to you the long lost Monolith tape. Monolith was like kingsport's answer to napalm death and morbid saint, if N.D. and M.S. were playing at some southern states wrestling event at the civic auditorium. Even though they never achieve N.D. like speed (exceept the last 11 second track), the riffs are very thrash metal and the sound is mean, tough, dark, and very metal. not much is known about this tape other than that it was recorded between '92-'94 somewhere on center street in kingsport...right up the road from me probably. sadly, there is no original cover art, but BIG thanks to Ben for ripping his tape copy of it. the cover included he also made because he's that much of a trooper. this is true appalachian metal. i hope you enjoy.

Monolith - Dawn

Aghast - 2006 EP

Aghast were a two piece brutal death metal band from Kingsport. they played live occasionally and released this 4 song e.p. on chaotic underworld, where it is still in print. if you like bands like Suffocation, Incantation, early Deicide, and Necrophagist, this is right up your alley. ultra brutality from the holston valley of dead bodies.

http://www.mediafire.com/?0m0tmn5qzmm

Next To Of Course America God I Love You

here's two songs from Johnson City hardcore band Next To Of Course America God I Love You. N.T.O.C.A.G.I.L.Y. existed for a brief time, made from members of past bands like Gettysburg and Ackro, toured with virginia's Lewistown, and recorded these 2 songs for a split tape with that band.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ykhmniuono2

TWENTIETH POST MEGA POST!

This is the 20th post since i began Scummified, so here is something special for everyone. Here are five demos from five very different bands, all from this area. I hope you enjoy. its now 9pm on August 29th, and i started this project this morning. Please download, and PLEASE, leave me some comments, huh? i worked really hard for everyone to hear some of the unique musical heritage this region has, and will continue striving to archive only the best punk rock, hardcore, and metal this area had to offer.

The Auditors Will Be Audited, The Accountants Will Be Held To Account
A two piece (guitar/drums) from the infamous Lenoir House, it was j.d. (ex-hadaka matsuri/jacuzzi suicide/kakistocracy) and me, and we were, as evan put it so rightly, "influenced by thin lizzy and blastbeats". we played a lot at the lenoir house, around town and regionally, and we also toured for 10 days in 2004 (playing chattanooga and murfreesboro,tn, bloomington, indiana, oberlin, ohio, pittsburgh, pa, athens, ohio).
j.d. ripped these tracks (the ones i ripped skipped) but i found the tape and scanned the cover and inside, which is also included. the demo cassette was only 6 tracks, but also included here is an unreleased track which was supposed to go on a compilation cd put together by travis from asshole parade, but never happened.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?zo2gmoadpr1

The Scams
The Scams were a local band who existed for quite a long time, only recently disbanding this year. members were also in The Business Machines (stuff by them coming soon!), Dissociative Rhythm Madness (also disbanded recently), and more. This demo, which i think is the last one they did (but i could be wrong),came out in 2007and finds them experimenting with almost "cowpunk" like sounds mixed in with their traditional hardcore attack. these guys are missed, a band that got better with each show up until the end of their existence. they were destroyers.
sorry, i have no track listing and no artwork except for a picture from their myspace.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?yxoxyitzys2

Greed Disease
Another of my bands from over the years, Greed Disease was a two piece (me-bass/j.p-drums) anarchopunk band. the songs on this demo are all political and listening to it now i can tell it was written by 19 year old "activist(active in getting high, thats for sure) anarchist" me...and is it embarassing? not really. do i still espouse the same beliefs i did almost 10 years ago? some, yeah, but not all. this demo was recorded at 2 seperate times, first 7 songs in summer 2001, 8-10 were recorded 2000. this demo made its rounds locally apparently...people still remember greed disease even though we never played a show. oh well.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?tnxretogt9z

Mind Sludge
This demo is six tracks of total napalm death worshipping brutal, detuned crust-grind. a newer breed of local band, and sick as shit too. playing shows regularly around the area, so check 'em out. if i told you what other bands these kids were in it'd fill up a page.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?1zznnggyqog

Black Winter Holocaust
Black Winter Holocaust is a two piece black metal band from the mountains of southwest Virginia. Not much is known about this elusive duo. they do have a myspace, but there isn't very much on it. so far this is their only recorded output, four tracks of Immortal influenced cold appalachian black metal.

get it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?jkmczkyw1it

MONOLITH - old school Kingsport Metal

In the late 80's/early 90's there was a death metal band from Kingsport called Monolith. They may even still be around in some variation, but i know that in the early to mid 90's they released a demo tape and got big in japan (?).the demo tape is something which i am trying to procure somehow for your listening displeasure. (and if anyone seeing this has this tape contact me!)
heres some live footage of them in 1992.

Pilgrimm & Aorta Journal

these are 2 self released cd's from 2 different bands that existed in this area for short time periods. Aorta Journal is the older of the 2, i'm not sure when their 3 Song Demo cd-r was released, but it is noisy, heavy, almost grindcore, but definantly awesome. Pilgrimm is very heavy, detuned sludge. my now defunct metal band played with them a few times, and this cd is excellent, but I don't think it captures how bowel-shakingly massive they sounded live.

the pilgrimm cd is still in print and available from chaotic underworld records, a johnson city ran label specializing in experimental releases.
get them here:

Aorta Journal - 3 Song Demo: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnzmn1ywgoy

Pilgrimm - Seek The Old Path And Walk Therein CD - http://www.mediafire.com/?h44y11hmtjm

Appalachian Lovecraftian Black Metal

So I have been wanting to post this since the beginning of Scummified, but I was just waiting for the right time.

You could say I've been waiting until the stars were aligned in the proper positions to unleash it.

This is Yog Sothoth, my black metal project. It is 5 tracks of H.P. Lovecraft inspired black metal. There is NO racist/sexist/homophobic/nationalistic views in Yog Sothoth. it is purely inspired by a love for the region that I live in, a love for the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and the mythos that he created and others have added to; and musically inspired by darkthrone, ulver, and goblin.

please check it out, and let me know what you think. it hasn't been given a proper tape/cd release yet, but I am working on that.

Uusally the rules for downloading are if you like it, buy it. If you like this and would like an actual copy of it, just let me know in the comments and we'll be in contact from there.

through fathomless aeons he sleeps, waiting to awaken:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nmfjgzmih12

Cheap Skate

It's time for another trip down Northeast TN Punk Rock Lane with Cheap Skate.
Cheap Skate was a pop punk/ska band started by Austin Goins(vocals, guitar), Dusty Evans (bass, vocals) and Kevin Masters (drums, vocals). they recorded their first 7 song demo in early 1997. Summer of '97 was when I met Austin and Dusty at the shirt-lived "Our Place" hangout on Wilcox Drive in Kingsport. They gave me their demo and a sticker (wow, a punk band around here who already had merch!!) and we all became friends, even to this day. my old band Plan 9 (expect stuff up here from them soon) and Cheap Skate played a lot of shows together, sometimes even borrowing austin for guitar or drums when our guitarist either couldnt make it or our drummers sucked. one show in particular stands out in mind in Erwin(?), TN on the back porch of someones trailer...somehow i started cooking in their kitchen and kids grabbed me to dance during cheap skate and i left bacon frying in a skillet and almost burned the trailer down. oops.
anyways, i don't have any artwork or even pictures of this to post, but will post some when i find/get them. the music, however, is 17 tracks of ramones/screeching weasel influenced pop punk with some ska punk songs thrown in for good measure. 1-10 is the "Official Beagle" tape, recorded in 1998 by the man who ran Our Place. (it should be known that Cheap Skate won a "battle of the bands" competition in summer of 1998 and won free studio time, which they used to record this, and that by this time they had added second guitarist J.D. Collette, later of hadaka matsuri and long time friend, who appears on this recording) 11-17 is the bands original tape demo in all its glory. the beginning of "dead old man" on the demo sounds funny but it's from a 12 year old tape that someone converted to .wma, then i converted all tracks to mp3.

re-uploaded 8/29/09 with COVER SCAN and correct tracklisting!!

http://www.mediafire.com/?2kmuiwznjhz

Ikkabod

so heres the deal.

around the turn of the millenium some friends got together and decided to start a band. the musical tastes varied from member to member, and they wanted a band that reflected those tastes. so Blood Diner was formed. Blood Diner was started by andy (vox, keyboards), matt (guitar, vox), j.d. (drums, vox) and adam (bass). adam didn't last too long so austin joined , and when he joined the band renamed itself Ikkabod. Ikkabod started playing shows with a fury. what did they sound like?

well, that was always a point of argument. i always thought they sounded like spazzier punk rock metal bastard version of faith no more. you might think otherwise. i will say this....between 2000-2001 i lived in knoxville and would come back to kingsport occasionally when work and school permitted it, and usually either saw them practice at the fabled lenoir house or playing for hardly anyone at some local bar or v.f.w. hall or wherever they could. i fucking LOVED this band while they existed, they were my favorite local band. NO ONE else was doing such insane stuff at the time around here, everyone was either playing really bad pop punk or (even worse) korn sounding shit and they just played whatever the fuck they felt like.

like all good bands, inner turmoil split the band on the day of what was supposed to be my first show with them as second guitarist, but they left behind this recorded legacy. what you have here is the self released "Dark Angel Rock Attack" cd-r demo (which is still available from humdinger records) and extra tracks, including 4 songs that were supposed to be released on 7'' and another few early songs recorded "live" to a four track (i think).

will you like it? i don't give a fuck if you do or don't. i liked it alot when it was going on, and listening to it now, it brings back memories of a time when everyone still hung out, got fucked up in the garage together while watching wrestling and bad movies, reminds me of days sitting at the lenoir house watching them practice, listening to them recording the cd at the lenoir house and the insanity that that was, and just simpler times.

if you lived around here during 2000-2003 and you liked this band, you owe it to yourself to have this. if you've never heard them and want something new to check out, i envy you. to me, this band was punk as it got for this area, that time. another band like them won't be seen.

Oh, The Horror!!

no more songs on my jukebox heart....

Hadaka Matsuri was a band that i was involved in for a little over 2 years. it was me and two of my closest friends, playing what would be called "emotional hardcore" (but to us was just hardcore, because in truth shouldn't all music have some sort of emotional resonance?), touring halfway across this great country of ours, breaking hearts and dropping jaws wherever we went. we formed in august of 2002, toured between April 26th 2003 - June 4th 2003, played some awesome shows with some fucking awesome bands (ten grand, brazilia, fuerza x, asshole parade, funeral diner, yaphet kotto, facedowninshit, others), met a lot of awesome people (tess fox, our ft. wayne contact, where are you now?), slept on a lot of porches, played a lot of basements, etc. we self recorded/produced/released 150 of these little bastards, the Four Track Demonstration. the first 150 we made were those little 3'' cds in plastic cases with a fold out insert and back cover...me, derek, and j.d. kept one each and sold the rest on tour. well, the thing with these 150 is that we fucked up during the, uh, mixing process (yeah right, there was none) and the songs only come out mono, no matter what you play it on. eventually when we were gonna tour again in Oct. '04 we repressed the cd in a full size disc without the fold out insert, just a one sided insert with our name, contact info, and track listing, but it came out both speakers this time.

we also made some shirts up that none of us have now, heres what one looks like if you happen to see it at goodwill or something:

Touring was insanity for me. It was the first time I had left the south, the farthest I've ever been away from home, and i was doing it with no money to my name and in the company of my closest friends in a beat up '84 Ford Econoline with no wind-shield wipers (oklahoma is scary as shit with no windshield wipers ), an oil leak, and bad alternator problems we would come to find out..... After tour was over and we got back to Tennessee (in reality we got stranded in Oberlin, Ohio the last 2 weeks of tour and thats a whole other mess of bullshit to get into) we all kinda went our different ways, Derek moved back to KY, J.D. moved to Oberlin, and I stayed here, joined Assgasm, yadda yadda yadda...the last show we played was in Asheville, NC with Shitstorm and Asshole Parade in August 2005 .

In our short existence we did more than I've ever done with any other band I've ever been in. Hadaka Matsuri was everything I got into punk rock for, meeting new people with the same interests, not feeling like an outcast, being with my friends and playing music with them, doing things our way and by ourself with no pretensions of monetary gain or fame or anything, just doing it because it had to be done and we had to do it.

On tour our "roadie/spiritual guidance" was one mr. zach saunders, who really helped me out during the rough stretches, and whose constant enthusiasm for our music and for just fucking getting out there and doing it was goddamn infectious. words cannot thank him enough.

R.I.P. Vanowar. Gone, but never forgotten.

here is the flyer for our first show ever:



these are the only known pictures of us:



here is the demo in its entirety with full cover scans, bring a tissue.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dqryekyimmn

Assgasm

Assgasm was my old punk band, we existed from '05 until early '07 and then drugs broke up the band. which sucks to admit, but it's the truth. we played a handful of good shows and bad ones, recorded some shitty rehearsal tapes, smoked a lot of weed and drank a lot. this recording is our final recording, done in one take on my analog 4 track with one microphone for everything, vocals, guitar, bass and drums. no apologies for the quality, besides, it's punk fucking rock and all my favorite punk albums arent overblown juggernauts of production, they're simple, heartfelt, and usually vicious. which was what i strove for in assgasm anyways.

special thanks to "seal the deal" neal for taking my tape of this and converting it into glorious mp3 format.

so check this out, if you like it, leave comments. hell, if you don't like it, leave comments, i'm not picky.


download it here! http://www.mediafire.com/?c0x0oj2mmjm