Call me a CABS
We’ve got an autobiographical-cum-historical Pick Five for you folks this week. What records took a while to reveal their charms to us? Which LPs were we either too provincial or too snobby to enjoy in their own time? We’ll fill you in on that plus a recent show from Hide on the latest episode of We Have A Technical! You can rate and subscribe on iTunes, Google Play Music, or download directly or stream from Spotify or the widget down below.
Completely agree on Last Rites. After obsessing over TDP for years, this was too dense to “get” after one or two listens. It took years for me to fully appreciate everything they were doing and saying.
Regarding Numb, it’s pretty much impossible to top Blood Meridian, and that was after I thought it was impossible to top Wasted Sky. But Don Gordon established a template of orchestrated noise brutality with Blood Meridian that bands like HIDE are still chasing. Language of Silence is “good” it’s just not “as good as”.
Cubanate’s Interference was the greatest thing I’d ever heard when it came out. It was the marriage of everything I loved about tech step with the fury of Heel. Pairs well with Hanzel und Gretyl’s Transmissions from Uranus. (In fact, saw them on the same bill, touring for these respective records, open for Rammstein in NYC in 1998. I left that concert with my pants torn to literal shreds from the mosh pit.)
You mentioned Skinny Puppy as too harsh and dangerous. I had this reaction to Chrysalide’s Don’t Be Scared, It’s About Life and for a while I couldn’t find a point of insertion into the order of that record. It felt like you had to inch your way bit by bit into that bedlam. Also anything by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult didn’t stand a chance against ‘After the flesh’ from The Crow Soundtrack and was promptly discarded at one point to return to me almost two decades later as groovy and infectious and absolutely worth diving into.