If you’ve ever wondered what kind of lover I am, then let me tell you a story about something that happened at work today. We share our restroom with the general public, which is already a fucking mistake, but this is compounded by being on the demarcation line of a shitty part of town, so said restroom takes a lot more punishment than it would, say, two miles down the road away from the city. Anyway, someone took a handful of (I hope) their own shit and smeared it all over one of the toilets, fingerprints and all, and got a little bit on the floor. Since I’m in charge here I figured I’d put on gloves and spare my employees the experience and take matters into my own hands. Anyway, this has nothing to do with what a romantic experience with me is like, save a crass masturbation joke and probably handfuls of (I hope) your own shit.
It’s the first week of autumn, which means I’ve been drinking pumpkin and apple flavored coffees for about a month now. It also means it’s time for some on-the-nose shit.
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There we go.
But this isn’t going to be about Marduk’s last great album. Instead I’ve had it rattling around my head to do a piece on some lesser known (or underappreciated, if that term makes you feel better) American bands. It even contains a cry for help at the end, though honestly it feels more like screaming into the asshole of the void itself at this point.
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There was a point in my life where, for whatever juvenile reason, I thought that only black metal musicians should create black metal and anyone from other places in metal should stay in their lane. So, when Hemlock originally popped up in a zine I was reading and it mentioned it featured Danny Lilker (I don’t need to mention his resume, you should fucking know it) I slagged it off like it was going to be some unserious, jokey kind of shit. Why? Because until maybe three or four years ago I was a twit. These days? I’m a delight. Regardless of my personal journey to becoming the best version of myself, I decided to give Hemlock’s debut, Crush the Race of God, a shot. It’s never left my psyche since.
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That last sentence may seem a bit hyperbolic, but I shit you not I hum the fucking bass intro to “Cry to the Moon” practically every day and have for three decades now. I’m sure that will be brought up in the eventual diagnosis I get once my insurance kicks in and I go get evaluated to see what brand fuck up I am. Outside of it being one of the most catchy riffs ever committed to tape it’s also the perfect introduction to Hemlock as a band. Violent earworms with a generally miserable aesthetic and some of the greatest vocals in a black metal band, period. Hemlock completely dispelled any preconceptions I had, instantly. I was still very much immersed in the corpse painted aesthetics of the time (still am) so for there to exist such a genuinely malevolent steeped in the occult and the filth of society? It was a learning experience.
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Over the years I got to see Hemlock live a few times. One particular time stands out for me. It was sometime in the autumn of 2000 and my mother had just died not too long before. I drove up north a few hours to Hartleys, a venue that Roy Fox was doing shows out of if I’m not misremembering shit, and probably the first underground venue I’d gone to in the states. Hemlock was playing, pretty sure with Crucifier? Deceased? I know I saw all of these bands there around that time. Anyway, I obviously was not in the best mental state of my life and really needed something to help escape. When Hemlock came out, their vocalist Desecrater, began their set by throwing chairs into the crowd. Not just a casual toss, mind you, but whipping the fuckers out there with intent to injure. I don’t remember if it was this show or one of the other times I saw them (maybe both) but he had a bullwhip that he used on the crowd if they got anywhere within range. It was the cathartic violence I needed.
Hemlock released three full lengths and a split with hardcore/powerviolence progenitors Black Army Jacket. Every minute of their discography is a vital piece to the USBM puzzle that gets passed up in favor of more aesthetic or “in the now” politically progressive bands, which is fucking criminal. Easily in the top ten live bands I’ve witnessed over the years and very fucking overdue for a vinyl pressing of the full lengths.
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I guess it was in 2011 that I ended up going to see Hooded Menace in Philly, I don’t remember the venue at all. It was a fucking loaded lineup, though, with Ilsa, Anhedonist, (I think) Oak and the band I’m about to verbally stumble around, High Priest. I’d known High Priest’s drummer, Rudy, for many years through his work with purveyors of sonic anguish, Otesanek, and the fact that the two times I let him use my kit when my doom band, March Into the Sea (please clap) played with them, he bled all over the fucking thing. Since Otensanek had broken up a few years prior, Rudy had moved down to New Orleans and was making noise there, including recording the only High Priest material, In Death We Crawl, in 2009.
Now I can’t tell you very much about that show as it occurred at the tail end of several very bad years for me, just that every band was excellent, Chip from the Body was there, and about eight hours later me and my girlfriend at the time hopped into the car to head west for Blake Judd’s wedding, which is also where I found out the IRS said I owed them close to half a million (eventually they settled on it being closer to two million) and froze my bank account while I was still in Chicago. Hard to tell who made out worse that weekend. But what I can tell you is that I picked up the vinyl of the High Priest ep and spent the next few weeks at the record store I was working at playing the fuck out of it. Nasty black metal with that real authentic coating of filth that brought to mind the same kind of atmosphere (not sound, read that again if you need to) of the VON material before the whole VON Property Group LLC and it’s subsidiary VON Publishing Corp sort of took the wind out of those sails (ignoring the more recent VON Goat material as well, for quality and sanity purposes.) I recall thinking that this band was going to be fucking huge. But then things went quiet. Sadly, Rudy passed in 2017, which was honestly longer than a lot of people expected. He was a genuine maniac, with a black heart of gold. High Priest left behind this one recording and I can’t find shit on if the members did anything else. For some reason I thought they were attached to Abysmal Lord but I’m also rocketing out of middle age, so fuck. Anyway, the LP isn’t overly expensive and is one of those hidden gems of the underground.
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Also in 2011, albeit it around Halloween, I was trying to catch up on Circle of Ouroborus releases I’d missed while I’d fallen out of life the previous few years, which was easier said than fucking done, but one of the releases I was able to secure was their split CD with Crooked Necks, an American band I was not familiar with. One of my favorite philosophical reasons for the existence of splits (and my propensity for them in my own work) is that both bands obviously compliment each other but also that it’s a way for existing fans of a band (CoO in my case) to discover new artists they may never have stumbled on. This was one of those serendipitous moments.
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So, unlike the ugliness of the previous two bands I wrote about, Crooked Necks can’t really even be considered “black metal” in the traditional sense, because there really is no metal element to their music. This was around the time where USBM started really reaching, experimentally, and you started getting shit like Liturgy (whose first show ever was opening for me, which is a trivia fact you can use the next time you want someone to not want to fuck you) and the abandonment of the metal portion of black metal. In a lot of cases, this ended up just being shit that sounded like eighth generation Neurosis clones with Burzum shirts (as was the fashion in those circles at the time) who probably spent more time smoking American Spirits and debating the merits of Cigarettes After Sex than actually caring about black metal. Or you had moments of blissful genius. Crooked Necks are the second option.
Jet black ambience, tortured vocals, and a strange blend of post punk, ambient black metal, and shoegaze, all to create something unique and unsettling yet simultaneously comforting. Also it makes sense they have a record of fucked up Joy Division covers. But their one full length Alright is Exactly What It Isn’t is a genius snapshot of a strangely exciting time in American black metal.
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This week I’m ending with a query, that being: does anyone have any contact with the guy behind the project Caves? I’ve got a link to the Discogs page here, which is the only information I could find on the project. This was a solo project out of Brooklyn in the late 00s. Noisey, exquisite shit.
Caves was another one of those unheralded, weird and excellent USBM bands that dropped into existence in the late 00’s. I remember having contact with him on Myspace, but this was also around the time I lost the signal with reality, and he vanished somewhere after. At the very least I’d love to get digital files of the Caves recordings, if not physical or contact with him.
And that’s it for this one. I’m still working on my Substack, so nothing to report there. Stay tuned for two weeks from now when I start writing about scary shit, and not the kind wiped onto a public toilet. Until then..
