Apr 152024
 

One look at the cover art for the debut album from Tampa-based Torturers’ Lobby tells you that the music is likely to be disturbing but unconventional. It’s not easy to decipher what we’re seeing. Though skeletal remains and a vulture’s head appear to be part of the scene, the ghastly greenish hues and running veins create a twisted image of an old desecration.

It turns out (thankfully) that the music is also disturbing and unconventional, even more so than the cover art, the result of a willfully free-wheeling hybridizing of influences that follows only its own twisted logic but (also thankfully) doesn’t come off as “different for the sake of being different,” cohesion be damned.

We should quickly add that the music’s intensity is often so overpowering and shattering that it might leave you bug-eyed and slack-jawed.

As evidence of these conclusions we have two songs from the album to spotlight today, one of which has previously surfaced and one of which we’re premiering today in advance of the album’s June 14th release by Caligari Records and Ixiol Productions. Continue reading »

Mar 172024
 

Yesterday I read that in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parades in the Irish Channel of New Orleans, float riders toss cabbages and potatoes to the people on the street, a unique twist on the Mardi Gras practice of throwing strings of beads to revelers.

Although a flurry of cabbages would be entertaining, I’ll have to aim some other things at your head on this Paddy’s Day — spiky obsidian things dipped in poison or hallucinogens, some red with heat and some freezing.

Of course, I felt compelled to lead with music from a couple of Irish bands before crossing the waters east and west.

P.S. This column is late-appearing because I can’t hold my Saturday night Jameson shots and Guinness back like I used to. and my spouse and friends kept me up way past my bedtime. Continue reading »