Okay well I played this on 33 RPM at first and had a good chuckle at Zen Guerrilla’s expense thinking they were trying to sound like slow, plodding Clutch. But then I realized I was the dummy and changed the speed. Much better!

When I found out Zen Guerrilla released a record with a Sabbath cover on one side and an Iron Maiden cover on the other, my inner Metal child roared “That ROCKS!” And it does, but really, what did you expect? There isn’t a lot of re-interpretation here. “The Trooper” is straight out of the box, super-duper fast, Camaro driving, crotch grabbing metal. The Zen Guerrilla brand distortion is at a minimum in what I take to be a heartfelt tribute to Bruce and the boys.

“Mob Rules” is covered with classic Zen Guerrilla zeal, Marcus howling through the distortion and tons of heavy fuzz pounding out of the speakers. I can almost see the band jumping and falling around on stage.

Also, my copy of this 7-inch is mislabeled, with “The Trooper” label on the “Mob Rules” side and vice versa. Maybe that means I win something.

“…And with that die roll, the fiendish Orc King is finally flushed out of hiding. Boobarella, your voluptuous half-elf/half-dragon girlfriend, says a titillating surprise awaits you back at camp.”

“Dude, that’s total bullshit! I thought Boobarella was my girlfriend!”

“But I traded you all my Spawn figures for Boobarella,” screams the second pimply teenager in disbelief. “No take backs!”

“There’s more than enough Boobarella to go around,” snorts Phil, the third.

“Phil, we’re talking about my cherished Spawn collection here, including the ultra-rare, three-eyed, promo variation of…”

“Look, I’m gonna put on some music while you guys argue.”

Three seconds into the first track of Mountains, Robert (the chubby one) spits his Mountain Dew all over the Dungeon Master’s Guide. “Dude, this is, like, girl music!”

“Jesus, Phil, just give it a chance! Listen to the arrangements on this album: medieval-period instruments, intelligently-applied synthesizers, and minimalistic, bouncy guitar lines that swirl in and out of the mix in the most elegant way. This is beautiful indie rock.”

“Or a great soundtrack for our next AD&D campaign,” quips Phil.

“No, more like a Geddy Lee / Lou Barlow duet,” says Jordan.

“I was thinking more along the lines of a King Crimson-produced Polvo record or Joni Mitchell playing at a comic book convention,” says Robert.

“Don’t ask me how I know this,” says Jordan. “But Mountains is a unique concept album that no one expected from Mary Timony. The fantasy-novel lyrics aren’t another trite batch of indie irony, but a sincere effort by a girl every guy in the comic book shop would love to date. Sincerity like this is sorely lacking in indie music.”

“But does sincere mean good,” asks Robert, rhetorically. “Faux medieval instrumentals like ‘Whisper From A Tree’ aren’t interesting or surprising after one listen. What’s worse, half the album is made up of songs like that.”

“True, dude, but string-bending rockers like ‘An-Deluzion’ and ‘Painted Horses’ are pleasantly out of left-field. Multi-layered synthesizers wail along with guitars in every song, but with Timony’s ear for harmony, they don’t sound at all cheesy. The major problem is the sheer sameness of everything; you really can’t tell when one song ends and another begins. Mountains would be better as an EP; in its full-length incarnation, it drags on forever,” says Jordan.

“Final verdict,” says Robert. It’s a dark and pretty guilty pleasure that you’ll listen to a few times when no one else is home. You don’t want to like it, but it grabs you by the gerbils in spite of itself.”

“A worthwhile purchase if found in a used CD bin,” says Jordan.

“One last thing,” says Robert, turning to Dungeon Master Phil.

“Yeah?”

“What was my nearly-complete set of Betty Page trading cards doing between your mattresses?”

“Now, dude, I can explain…”

Jeff bought me this CD after we saw Sonna open for Bonnie Billy in Raliegh. That show was the first I’d ever heard the band, and I was giddy with glee when they finished their set. I heard some indie kids in front of me classify them as an “analog Tortoise” and compare them to Mogwai.

These comparisons bear out on We Sing Loud Sing Soft Tonight. The album sounds like the ocean, or maybe clouds, or some other swirly natural phenomenon, and would make a nice collection of noise to listen to while falling asleep or letting your mind run off its leash for a while.

I was a little surprised to hear vocals on the album (as there were none during their live show) but luckily they didn’t take anything away from the dreamy feel of the music. Sonna is great live, and lucky me, I wasn’t disappointed by their album either.

You know how some reviews start with “You’ll know you’ve got a classic on your hands the second you drop the needle on the record” or some such nonsense? Well, you’ll know you’ve got a classic on your hands with The Sonics Here Are the Sonics while you’re still holding the album jacket in your hand, before you ever hear anything, because of the tiny print that fills the entire back side and heralds the Sonics as everything from the first punk rock band ever to the best way to whiten teeth and enhance your sex life.

Really what you’ve got is a fun record of old, grungy Kingsman-esque garage music that may or may not have influenced everyone from The Misfits to Neil Diamond but likely influenced some one somewhere. Or one of the band member’s kids now runs a record label and decided to reprint his pop’s old album with liner notes as a lovely father’s day gift/experiment in marketing. Who knows?

It’s fun to listen to, though, and will add mad indie cred to your record collection, which is always handy.

After a couple of self-financed independent releases, enchanting Canadian chanteuse Sarah Slean is set to take over the world with Night Bugs, her most coherent and intriguing album yet.

The cover shot of Sarah’s head and shoulders, glowing and ethereal, with the famous nightbugs fluttering around her hair is a perfect visual representation of her unique brand of lyrical imagery, classical piano and pop song-writing skills.

The songs are eclectic from the word go. “Eliot,” an impassioned and desolate plea, questionins “How sure, how right / Can anyone be on sight?” over and over. Such rousing moments are complemented well by the quiet contemplation on “St Francis,” using a subtle guitar and voice arrangement in place of the usual piano based setting. “Weight” has an ascending piano riff more often found on hip-hop tracks, adding a fantastic groove to such a simple song about relationship disintegration.

An obvious fascination with early Queen material comes right to the fore on “Drastic Measures,” which is loaded with Freddie Mercury operatic drama. It is this uncanny ability to draw strong influences from genres such as 70s rock, classical compositions, old jazz standards, and even rebel songs (”Duncan” could motivate any uprising in history) into her own brand of pop songwriting that makes Night Bugs such a successful album. There’s never a doubt that you’re listening to an individual artist, yet some moments provide immediate recognition of the best musical days, past and present.

Classical composition “Dark Room” blends into the radio-bound romp of “Sweet Ones,” rounding the album off with the rousing “Bank Accounts.” Sarah herself sighs “Phew!” as the last trumpet blast sounds, surely as exhausted by the outpouring of raw emotion, impassioned, dark and all sung with a voice gleaned from the finest 20s jazz joints, as the listener.

Life So Far, a four song demo CD from Madison, Wisconsin based power punk trio Rattbelly, is probably the best produced CDR I’ve ever gotten. It just sounds good, and while that might not be a prerequisite for lo-fi indie rock records, I think melodic punk rock needs to be heard loud and clear, as opposed to like it was recorded under a pile of laundry in the bottom of an oil barrel.

The first two songs, “Rebel” and “Life so Far,” are damn catchy but a little lacking. While “Life So Far” is almost too reminiscent of Green Day, and the lyrics to “Rebel” leave me a little flat, both songs employ excellent use of Van Halen style melodic choruses, the kind of thing you sing out your car window on a spring day. The solid drumming gives purpose to the frantic pace of the music, giving these tracks a sense of wild energy being just barely held back for your safety. Sometimes I wish vocalist Dan Clark would just let it all hang out (vocally, that is). He’s got the pipes, but he just needs to work some character, an individual sound, into his vocals.

The second half of this short collection hits a little closer to home for me. Perhaps it’s the twisted nature of “Stalker” and “Beautiful Mommies” that allows the vocals to bust loose a little more, and here the music is heavier and more layered than your average pop punk song. The final outcome are two entertaining, kick ass songs that really showcase what Ratbelly is made of.

It’s rare to hear a band that makes catchy, radio-friendly, original rock and roll with a unique-enough sound to stand out from morass of moribund, corporate rock formula crap out there today. Rattbelly strikes a balance between garden-variety pop punk and angry, growling hard rock without relying on a safe, proven formula. Punk as fuck. I hope they go far.

I have never been a big fan of hip hop, especially commercial hip hop. In college, my friend Paul would try and turn me onto the likes of Method Man and Wu-tang. I would have none of it, there just wasn’t much for me to latch on to. I could appreciate the rhythm and the rhymes, but beyond that it was just more rapping with some back beats. Later in life, I discovered that I quite like hip hop, if it fits into a few categories. 1) It has an agenda that I can related to, example Aesop Rock, Fermented Reptile. 2) It’s incredibly catchy and fun to sing along with, example Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic Five. Or 3) The music itself is compelling and is an integral part of the lyrics. Enter Prefuse 73’s Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives.

Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives is one of those fusion of genre albums that makes you wonder why hasn’t anyone done something like this before? Sure there have been electronic elements in hip hop songs before, but nothing that I’ve heard uses them as a integral part of the album, the lyrics are the beats. Glitchy/IDM beats and stuttered vocals pepper this entire disc with brief ambient interludes and cut and paste speaking parts. This is taken to its pinnacle with “Point to B”, the skipping vocals become so staccato you wonder if they will come to a complete stop or just continue to break down into fuzz and white noise.

This is more than just another IDM release from Warp though. Scott Herren uses the electronic parts so much and so efficiently that the tracks were the rapper’s voice isn’t distorted, are the ones really stand out. “Life/Death” featuring Mikah 9 and “Blacklist” featuring MF Doom and Aesop Rock, and make a merely good glitch-hop album into a great hip hop album. I’m certainly not going to place Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives entirely into that genre though, especially since “Last Night” features a slightly digital stuttering Sam Prekop, post-rocker of Sea and Cake fame. Another monkey wrench tossed into the hip hop stereotype machine, but it’s a insanely mellow track that stands out from the raw bravado that the other rappers on the album put forth.

If anything comes of this release, I hope mainstream hip hop give Scott Herren a call to produce a few of their albums.

I read in some music magazine that Satellite Rides marked Old 97’s return to their roots. I took “roots” to mean “similar to Too Far Too Care” but apparently it means “boring, over produced Matchbox 20-like songs” because that’s what it sounded like. I feel sad being that harsh, because Too Far Too Care was so damn good (and I keep buying Old 97’s releases hoping to hear something even in the same ballpark) but I’m looking at my capsule criticisms as tough love.

If I didn’t like Too Far Too Care so much, I might have even liked Satellite Rides better. It’s not a horrible album, just comparatively shallow.

Neurosis is one of those bands.

You know… you are having a conversation with your record-geek friend and you say “wow man… this new album is totally heavy” and your friend says “Whatever, man… Neurosis has been doing that same thing for like 15 years”.

The Melvins… The Swans… Neurosis… they’ve been doing “it” for years before you ever knew “it” existed.

Being pulverizing and bleak and brutal… playing slow glaciers of riffs layered with screaming… writing off the wall lyrics that depress and confuse… it’s nothing new.

They were doing it 15 years ago man.

In that subset of bands, there are the Slayers, who bludgeon their style to death year after year until it becomes rote and nearly irrelevant. They live on their reputation and most likely continue to crank out album after album simply because they like being musicians and not because they love the music.

Then there are the Neuroses, for whom every album expands on the vision of the last one. Every song is a step in a new direction without ever abandoning the things they have done in the past. Every move they make ups the ante for their peers who were already unable to keep up.

So the lesson for this album, as every other review is fond of mentioning, is melody.

Neurosis’ past forays into melody have been of the early Ian Mackaye variety where they are sort of hitting notes and sort of shaping out some primitive melodies, but it’s obviously not high priority. Shouting in (implied) E Minor.

Now here they are on A Sun That Never Sets singing. Really singing. Not yelling.

The subdued parts of the songs are as weighty and well-executed as any of the heavy parts, and when the tsunamis of heaviness finally do interrupt the campfire singing, they are layered with violins and bagpipes - not with the baroque ornamentation of a black metal band, but dense and unsettling like melodies played by a swarm of insects. Neurosis has not decreased the brutality one notch… they are merely including some things to compare it to for a change.

From the a cappella ending of “Falling Unknown” to the bizarre chanting of “From Where Its Roots Run”, it’s revitalizing to hear that a band can stay at the top of its game and keep their music unquestionably heavy while still taking some chances. It’s metal music for metalheads with a bigger attention span and a hunger for something richer… metal for grownups.

Mirah Yom Tov Seitlyn sings 16 glorious tracks on You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This. I first heard Mirah’s voice on the Microphones’ It Was Hot We Stayed In The Water, when a feminine, breathy voice breaks through screaming, “Buy my record, I am Mirah!” So I did.

The songs are pretty straight forward lyrically, dealing with relationships, love, heartbreak, all the normal things you would expect a singer-songwriter to sing about, but her voice makes it extremely pleasant to listen to the things that would otherwise bore me to death.

Musically it sounds like a Microphones’ album which is fine with me, since I enjoy the noisy arrangments of Phil Elvrum.