The post Abby Jeanne “Isle of Misfit Toys” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

The rest of this post will focus on Milwaukee’s Brain Bats. We caught them play this past weekend, opening for The Spits along with one of my favorite local bands, Gallery Night, and another MKE group, Sex Scenes. Brain Bats play punk rock, heavily influenced by – as if the artwork didn’t make it obvious – creepy underground horror comics and a lot of cheesy B-movies from the 50′s, 60′s and 80′s that “get thrown in a blender to flavor the songs.” During their performance, singer Dillon Hallen commanded the floor with a frenetic vicious stomp that never stopped (and made it exceedingly difficult to take live action shots).

Fortunately he lives and works in our neigborhood so I was able to get him to slow down for a few minutes to chat about the split single. The tracks on the 7″ are a couple of leftovers from the 2017 recording session Brain Bats did with Shane Hochstetler at Howl Street Recordings, that session also supplied their debut 7″ release, “Road Kill From Outer Space.” “Feed It” is a punk rock ass-shaking screamer with a killer groove and “The TV That Ate My Brain” is a space-alien hard rocker, big metal guitars and thundering drums.

Dillon also was able to elaborate on a really cool story that our mutual friend Bill kinda told me at the show but that I was unable to recall the next day (it was loud, there were drinks, Bill is a highly entertaining but rather non-linear conversationalist and was getting distracted and off-topic about golf – if you know Bill you know exactly what I’m talking about). Besides singing for Brain Bats, Hallen has a new and extremely cool project in the works with a few friends called TV Tombs. They are in the process of collaborating with a couple of artists to produce a read-along printed book and vinyl record, the kind popular back in the 60′s and 70′s, especially with Disney movies (I had one in the 70′s from 101 Dalmatians that I listened to/read so much that my parents took it away for, like, a year). Like Brain Bats, the material filling the book and record are influenced by 80s monster and alien movies and will be family-friendly, kid appropriate. Called “My Best Friend the Monster,” the book will finish its publication later in June and the record should be pressed by the end of summer. Be on the lookout for this! Dillon was gracious enough to share a sneak peak at some of the book’s content.

The post Brain Bats “Feed It” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

Though we missed last night’s show, we did see them this past February at Company Brewing (along with Static Eyes and Brother O’Brother) so I know what a fierce, face-melting performance they put on (below, pictures from that  show of singer/guitarist Al Kramer and bassist Myles Coyne, one in which Coyne is literally melting his own face off).

Highway Lord is heavy heavy psych, richly stewed with metal-fuzzed guitar and dark hypnotic stoner rock: i.e. Black Angels and AC/DC got together, did a few shots to them amp up (Black Angels), and smoked a shit-ton of weed to mellow them out (AC/DC), and then threw on a laser-light show. A couple of the guys in Moon Rats are also in Calliope (a couple are also in other Milwaukee bands like Sonic J, The Rashita Joneses and Mouse Corn) and my friend Veronica described Moon Rats as “What if Calliope was having a really rough week and decided to take it out on their instruments?…every single song [is] delivered like it is the last song they’ll ever play so they better beat the bejeezus out of it.” They are intense. My favorite tracks from Highway Lord are: the slow-building, richly layered “Become the Smoke,”  the out-Black-Sabbathing Black Sabbath vibe on “Overdose,” the hauntingly sparse-dense-sparse tension of “The Hunter,” the desolate highway lament on “Motor Sword” and the beautiful chaos of the title track “Highway Lord.” You can listen to the entire album here or buy the digital album here or, better yet, catch them at their next show and get a tape or vinyl record.

The post Moon Rats “Highway Lord” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

The post Record Store Day 2018 appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

They don’t play out much and haven’t released anything in awhile, but their melodic and harmonic 60′s inspired twangy garage punk was super-upbeat and fun…unlike Greg Ashley, who plays solo acoustic guitar and has some of the most wrist-cutting level of depressing songs I’ve heard.

We made it through most of Ashley’s set but I was literally falling asleep and starting to feel sick (turns out it wasn’t his music but probably what I ate for dinner) so we had to leave before seeing Space Raft, another Milwaukee band on Dusty Medical that I really like. Fortunately Space Raft does perform quite a bit – and is working on a new album – so I’ll get to see them again soon.

The post Phylums “Decisions” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

Both “Paper Airplanes” and “Iron Eagle” have a chill 70′s rock vibe, without sounding old or stale. The guitar, vocals (Jordan Davis) and keys (TJay Christenson) provide a brightness to the solid rhythm section (Tyler Chicorel on drums, Jon Heibler on bass). The sunny sound has me longing for outdoor summer shows (one of the first times I saw Space Raft was up in Appleton at the Mile of Music festival a couple of years ago where they played in the back of an alley, lit by a brilliant patch of sun on a perfect August afternoon).

The post Space Raft “Paper Airplanes” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

Slow Walker’s latest release Ah Yes is fantastic (and packaged with only a slightly higher budget than their full-length Slow Walker from 2014: red ballpoint pen and pre-fabbed stamping on the record label vs a black sharpie scribble saying “fuck off”). They played several of the tracks at the record release show (plus some of their “old” tracks from the 2017 EP Command Z including the most excellent “Basement”). My favorites on Ah Yes are the shorter, punkier tracks with the groovy rhythms like “Weed Out the Squares,” “Sacrificial Lamb,” “Can U Wup?” (guest guitarist Graham Hunt of the Midnight Reruns joined Slow Walker onstage and on vinyl for that track) and the hypnotically funky “Ride.” But there are a couple of longer, trippy songs like the instrumental “Drum and Drummer” and “No Drinks.” “No Drinks” is really really heavy, Black Sabbath on mushrooms level of heft, that later morphs into a full-on garagey dance party. I believe it was during that song that Sam’s dad, Al Reitman, came on stage to shred along with the band.

The post Slow Walker “Ah Yes” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

The show on Saturday was an amazing trip, Calliope’s psychedelic rock enhanced by a hallucinogenic light show and stage backdrop; while it didn’t have the big budget production of the Black Angels show we saw the previous weekend, it was still a great visual experience. Below are photos of Al Kraemer (keyboards, vocals) getting in on the head-banging; Victor Buell (guitar) and Anthony Smith (bass) getting lost in the musical haze.

The post Calliope “Chapel Perilous” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

From their liner notes: “The term spoil + destroy is taken from a witch-hunting manual that, to paraphrase, states that even good witches who do not ‘spoil and destroy, but save and deliver’ should be killed. That resonated with us – the idea that, as a woman, your achievements are irrelevant because of your gender.” The tracks on the album back up this sentiment, with grit and without apology, a giant middle finger fuck you to the age of Trumpism. “(What You’re) Good For” leads off the record, bouncing with infectious rage. “Clever Girl” has an ominous groove and seethes with glorious feminist fury (this is probably my favorite track on the record but there are several runners-up). “Hiawatha” is beautifully haunting, deliciously dark. “Boogie Man” and “Girl Hater” are even darker, violently so as the beat revs up to head banging punk. The hashtag of 2016 appears on “Nasty Woman” as does the sane person’s response to climate deniers on “I Believe in Science.” While not my favorite song on the LP, Fox Face’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” is intriguing, reimagining the princess hit as a witchy antidote to pop poison.

The post Fox Face “Spoil + Destroy” appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.

(via More warm music for more cold nights)

The post Slow Walker, Calliope and The Cult of Lip show appeared first on Vinyl From The Vault.