Now Slaying in the Bay

I hate loading stuff onto Mediafire and also happen to live in a magical fairy land where each morning the sun rises and shoots supernatural rays of awesome at the ground, incarnating rad new bands wherever they land. This combination of factors has led to the creation of "Now Slaying in the Bay," an excitingly irregular feature where I will get my blurb on about rad bands playing around recently. Now, without further ado, the first installment of Now Slaying in the Bay:

Lycus-This band, both live and recorded, is a truly destructive sonic force to be reckoned with by anyone with a predilection towards the heavy/crushing/plodding end of the musical spectrum. Lycus plays melodic, even lush, funeral doom that is as decadently slow as it is calculatedly excessive in its brute heaviness. I think there are still copies of their Demo MMXI tape floating around out there, and if you can grab one, it’s one of the best ways around to spend a few bucks. If not, or whatever, or something, kvlt, uhhh, anyway you can listen to it at their Bandcamp.

Whirl-My friend and I saw this band play live the other day. “They sound like falling in love” was the immediate review. That pretty much sums it up when it comes to SF shoegaze fundamentalists Whirl. They’re overwhelmingly huge; I believe I counted 3 guitarists, a bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. Their pop hooks are so fucking sugary sweet you can’t stop taking them in until you’re in a coma, and they’re too catchy to get out of your brain for more than a few minutes. It’s almost too much, but it’s not, so it’s damn good. Stream their entire Distressor LP at their Bandcamp!

Swamp Witch- If you do drugs and like droning, tortured doom metal, then you’ll probably understand why the concept of chopping and screwing a droning, tortured doom metal track is a thoroughly good one. Swamp Witch has now done us all the courtesy of incarnating that concept as a reality, forever etched into the B side of their debut tape release Gnosis. On the A side, SW lumbers through three massive slabs of humidity-putrefied drone doom for the truly wretched. Tapes just sold out, but the whole A side is streaming at the Swamp Witch Soundcloud and can be downloaded here. The B-side version of the title track, as chopped and screwed by DJ Dreemz, can be found on Youtube.

Connoisseur- Like the finest hardcore bands of the 90’s, Connoisseur’s lyrics speak for themselves in absolute terms. All you need to know is they are straightforward doomy grind with lots of blast beats and slow parts. Now for the quotes:

“What if one day/A burrito ate you?/Think about it.”

“Hand me a beat bong/And pay with your life/Broken glass shards caked in resin…”

“When life has you on the edge/And you think you’re going to fall/Smoke marijuana.”

“I’ve smoked more weed than you’ve/Ever seen in your life/Fuck you…”

Now, look inwards. Based on your reaction to these quotes, you now know whether you like this band. I think they fucking rule, and they’ve started playing new songs live that are above and beyond what’s recorded on the Stoned Back to Life demo whose tracks you can listen to at their Soundcloud. If you’re not high now, you never were.