No Balls-Problems That Will Solve Themselves EP (2004[?)

"Yeah, well, life's strange."-Slim Charles, The Wire, season 4

Swedish noise is always a good choice when you wake up with a head full of booze, an empty wallet, and a pile of work you don't have the energy to do. Because really, what's more cathartic than pressing your ears up to the stereo and letting these Scandi slugs blast your sensory perceptions to smithereens with a few slices of carefully (sloppily) conceived torment?

Nothing. Nothing at all. No Balls is an on-again-off-again side project of the legendary, also on-again-off-again Brainbombs. Same personnel, mostly the same sound, so really the two projects complement each other. The sound is slightly different: there's a bit more rhythmic propulsion on this EP than your typical 'Bombs slab 'o' vinyl. But this amped up energy doesn't lead anywhere, of course, except further down into the black pit that is your tormented psyche. "Black Nerve" goes in an undulating circle, a circle not as harsh as a 'Bombs circle, but still pretty abrasive. "Countdown to Kill" features a guitar riff worthy of Kurt Cobain's golden days, but there's no catharsis, just monotonous repetition. Fuck teen spirit when you've got black tar heroin and Mad Dog, right?

I AM THE SLAYER.

P.S.-I'll get back to regular posting, and posting new stuffs, once I finish teaching this godawful summer class. Yeah, who'da thunk it? This Drug Punk has been charged with educating the youth. Joke's on them, eh?

Brainbombs-Urge to Kill LP (Load, 1999)

"I was a teenage zombie..." pt. 3

My first year of high school was noteworthy for the cast of freaks, druggies, and general n'er do-wells whose constellation I entered immediately upon matriculating from Catholic elementary school. I was a spry young lad with brain cells to spare, and boy, was I sparing with them that first year!
One of these characters, whom I'll be referring to as Ally, was extra-special special. She had arrived in Chicago from Nowheresville, Midwest (i.e., Indiana), and alighted upon my fair 'burg with a vengeance. By which I mean, this girl raided her father's medicine chest each morning for a cocktail of...what didn't she have? Codeine. Valium. Adderal. That antihistamine that rednecks use to make meth. Dayquil. Nyquil. Oh, and just for good measure, a Sunny Delight 20 ounce screwdriver.

Sometimes, Ally would share her bounty with me. One sunny Wednesday morning, we got started early. Popped some Valium at 10 am, an Adderal each at 11, and split the screwdriver over lunch. By 12:30, life was melting all around us. Nothing the teachers said made sense, the other kids kept telling us to stop drooling, and apparently Ally started nodding off in the midst of a chemistry set while I was ranting like a machinegun about Jorg Haider (yes, Jorg Haider). This merry day was brought to an end when Ally swandived into a bleacher during gym class. I made my escape out a back door and spent the rest of the afternoon hiding in the bathroom, mumbling to myself about globalization in a drugged fog.

The Urge to Kill LP is the history of that day on record. I just didn't realize someone had predicted it so accurately, a year before it happened! Listen to this and understand Billy Bao.


Mass murder on a scale you've never seen.  Dee Brainbombs lives here. You can buy this LP here.

*Edit, 12.10.13: I finally got around to re-upping the file. You can now revel in Brainbombs' majesty HERE *