Gratitude Fanzine #1 + Ride the Fury #3 (Weekly Seizure - 11.24.13)

I got to live out a middle school obsession and see Monster Magnet this week. If you happen to be a fan of the Magnet, get in touch. I'm thinking about starting a usenet forum. This week I got a few zines, namely Edgegazer and Gratitude, and the ever growing stack on my desk of things to review just keeps getting less and less tamed.

1) Ride the Fury - Pro Wrestling Zine #3

I caught this one on the last go-around and liked it enough to order again. Many of you already know I'm a wrasslin' fan across the board, and I'm glad that there's some ink being dedicated to the similarities between the cultures. I'm also prone to buy things which have "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan on them.

USA! USA!

The zine also came with a homemade Ring of Honor DVD which I haven't watched yet, but is from a good era of that promotion. I'm stoked on this zine but have a few gripes. There's some really great purely wrestling zines right now (Atomic Elbow here in the states, and Calling Spots in the UK). The layout is a little too "indesign" ish, to the point where the interview with Jam of Code Orange Kids is almost unreadable due to weird spacing errors. However, it saves itself with a few gems. One being an interview with Tom Sheehan in which he tells a story about Indecision touring with Milhouse and Silent Majority and how they gave a shirt to Perry Saturn at a rest stop. I'm also a big fan of the question "If your parents said you could bring back one wrestler who passed away to come back to life to eat Thankgiving with you, who would it be?" Bummed no one said "Ravishing" Rick Rude though. That's my answer, no question.

Nope, that ain't NYC Mayhem-era Tommy Carrol. RIP Brother

Overall, it's sick, the DVD is a nice flourish and I loved issue 2. The fuzzy layouts may seem like a persnickety gripe, but my eyes suck and it was kind of a stumbling block here. Much respect to the back cover image though, a full on HBK tribute mural.

Barbershop Window

DVD's, zines, demos and anything else related to Ride the Fury records (including the above reviewed zine) at their bigcartel. 

2. Gratitude #1

I don't feel even remotely hyperbolic by calling this the best zine of 2013. As a means of disclosure, I actually contributed the Rampage centerfold, but my bias isn't any issue. Gratitude takes after the zenith-era of brilliantly written core culture zines Lockin Out #1 Fanzine and Trumbull Escapades. These zines were insular, obsessive and academic in ways few other zines were, and at times even genius. I won't sell this one that hard. You're either into the aforementioned zines and therefore 'get it' or you don't. I am going to leave this, my favorite quote in the entire zine because it absolutely articulates my position on Metallica better than anything I've ever managed to pen...and i wrote an entire 60-page senior capstone project on them in college. (Not a joke:

What's cool about Metallica is: everything. I revel in seeing them bum people out by doing things they sincerely think are great. Sometimes I don't even know if what they're doing IS great, there's just too much history there for me to make heads or tails of it. The world's finest authors couldn't make up a character like Lars Ulrich if it was their life opus - the closest we have is Pete Campbell from Mad Men. God bless them both. --Leah Geragosian (@diahleah)

Top notch content and contributors, excellent art, footnotes (!) and the best Free Spirit interview I've ever read. There's a few of them here at the Mosher's Delight bigcartel. Get on the right wagon, bunko. 

Me and the dog will show you who's hard

NYC Mayhem - "Deathwish" (Dylan's Dumb iPod #14)

Apparently there was a thrash band from Louisville called Mayhem. Never heard of 'em, but interesting nonetheless (No bro, I've never heard of the Norweigian black metal band. Educate me, for I only learn about bands when Cold World spoofs them for merch designs).

Cool shirt bruh

NYC Mayhem experienced a few sonic permutations in their short lifetime, but this demo sees the lineup of Tony Marc and Gordon Ancis (both of a band called Assault that you've never listened to...right?) and Tommy Carroll (yes, THAT Tommy Carroll) on drums and vox (Phil Collins style). Later on in the game, Craig Setari (Sick of it All, Rest in Pieces, Straight Ahead) would replace Tony Marc (though, he's credited as being "ex-Smegma" in Metal Forces Magazine, history is weird!). Were it not for later and subsequent contributions to hardcore, it's difficult to say if people could muster up a passing fancy in this band, but that ain't important.

D.R.I, C.O.C, N.Y.C

I love this demo. A lot. So much that once I was listening to it on the way home from work. It was dusky outside, I thought I was alone and the time seemed ripe for public moshing...so I did it...and right when I get to the crosswalk I was heading (moshing) to, some sexy latina literally laughed and pointed at me. D'oh. That's how college worked for me. I moshed at inopportune times and didn't get dates. The astonishing thing here is that at the time, the exchange didn't seem that weird.

Though staking their claim as one of those "fastest bands around," this demo's actually chock full of above-average instrumentation and not tuneless warbling like a lot of the "pioneering" fastcore bands. Especially for a trio. Vocals are muddled, but riffs are noodly. Lore and long-haired fandom asserts that this demo is NYC Mayhem's only purely "metal" release (and that's why they've got a page on the metal archives) and the rest is just "thrashy hardcore" but my favorite shit involves line blurring of all kinds.

"Deathwish" has a snakey intro that conjures up the crossover stuff that D.R.I was messing with, and the bass always has a presence with this band. Then it goes into standard blast beat territory from then on.

Thanks the godz for those comp sites that compile all this stuff for dorks like me. Apparently some thrash band called Mortal Sin (from Australia) also had a release called Mayhemic Destruction but it came out a year later and had no relation to the New York band.

If you're a Tommy Carroll superfan, track down that Crumbsuckers live set where he heckles Kirk Hammett for being a "rock star."

Also, they used to call this "death core." If only they knew.