off!
Sumerlands Soundtrack the Moody ‘80s Movie in Your Mind, and More New Metal
There’s a new Ozzy Osbourne album out this month. There’s also a new Striborg album out: two and a half hours of oppressively bleak — and, at its best, downright chilling — “blackwave” courtesy of the Tasmanian loner known as Sin Nanna. I state these facts to demonstrate a simple point: The universe of what we call metal is vast, and more or less impossible to keep tabs on in its entirety. Favor the festival headliners and arena fillers, and you miss the best of the club acts and fledgling bands sweating it out over that soon-to-be-legendary demo; scour the underground obsessively and you might overlook a late-career triumph from a household name. So if this new incarnation of SPIN’s monthly metal roundup — in which I take over from Andy O’Connor, an astute and passionate lifer whose recom...
Watch OFF! in a Gun-Blazing Riot in New ‘Kill To Be Heard’ Video
OFF! have just shared “Kill To Be Heard,” the second taste of their forthcoming Free LSD. The video draws from the band’s upcoming feature film of the same name, which SPIN previously detailed in our behind-the-scenes feature of the band’s extensive music doings this year. [embedded content][embedded content] “Kill To Be Heard” features appearances from D.H. Peligro (Dead Kennedys), Don Bolles (Germs), David Yow (Jesus Lizard), Davey Havok (AFI), Chloe Dykstra, Chris D. (Flesh Eaters), and Chelsea Debo. It’s a riot of a video that includes the band’s new members, Justin Brown and Autry Fulbright, in an intense garage show gone wrong. Very quickly, audience members pull out some guns and begin shooting the band, while Off! takes revenge by knifing an old man. Off! is slated to per...
OFF!’s Cosmic Comeback
The man at the microphone is a sad wreck, slouched beneath a scruffy, colorless beard and filthy trucker’s cap, his stomach bulging beneath a loud Hawaiian shirt. His light blue slacks look like they date back to the Reagan era, and on the wall beside him is a collage of flying saucers, Bigfoot, Area 51, grain silos, pyramids, the Loch Ness Monster and other conspiracy obsessions. Then a sign lights up to announce: “On the Air.” It’s after midnight in Los Angeles as he leans over a laptop and says in a familiar, distinctive rasp: “Welcome back to another episode of Blowmind Show. I’m Keith, your host. My guest tonight is Jack Rogers. Jack was abducted and left with an implant in his leg.” The host is unrecognizable as Keith Morris, fiery dreadlocked singer for the hardcore supergroup OFF! ...
30 Artists Reflect on Metallica’s Black Album Turning 30
These days, Metallica’s self-titled fifth LP (aka the Black Album) is hailed as a bona fide classic. Quite admirable, considering how upon its 1991 release date, diehard fans spread buyer’s remorse faster than COVID. In this writer’s tenure as a surly clerk for a mall-based record-store chain, he remembers the true believers complaining about everything from the shortened song lengths to James Hetfield’s lyrics to uber-producer Bob Rock’s framing of their heavy metal hellions. Back then, insufferable customers got their cash refunds while others continued to bitch like mad with the subtext that “maybe it would grow on me.” Now 30 years and approximately 35 million sales later, the Black Album is downright canonical. Sure, the Bay Area thrash-metal mavericks were indeed architects (alongsid...
30 Artists Reflect on Metallica’s Black Album Turning 30
These days, Metallica’s self-titled fifth LP (aka the Black Album) is hailed as a bona fide classic. Quite admirable, considering how upon its 1991 release date, diehard fans spread buyer’s remorse faster than COVID. In this writer’s tenure as a surly clerk for a mall-based record-store chain, he remembers the true believers complaining about everything from the shortened song lengths to James Hetfield’s lyrics to uber-producer Bob Rock’s framing of their heavy metal hellions. Back then, insufferable customers got their cash refunds while others continued to bitch like mad with the subtext that “maybe it would grow on me.” Now 30 years and approximately 35 million sales later, the Black Album is downright canonical. Sure, the Bay Area thrash-metal mavericks were indeed architects (alongsid...
30 Artists Reflect on Metallica’s Black Album Turning 30
These days, Metallica’s self-titled fifth LP (aka the Black Album) is hailed as a bona fide classic. Quite admirable, considering how upon its 1991 release date, diehard fans spread buyer’s remorse faster than COVID. In this writer’s tenure as a surly clerk for a mall-based record-store chain, he remembers the true believers complaining about everything from the shortened song lengths to James Hetfield’s lyrics to uber-producer Bob Rock’s framing of their heavy metal hellions. Back then, insufferable customers got their cash refunds while others continued to bitch like mad with the subtext that “maybe it would grow on me.” Now 30 years and approximately 35 million sales later, the Black Album is downright canonical. Sure, the Bay Area thrash-metal mavericks were indeed architects (alongsid...
OFF! Covers Metallica’s ‘Holier Than Thou,’ Their First New Song in Seven Years
Following seven years of relative silence, punk supergroup OFF! are back with a new lineup, label, and tune. The group, formed in 2010 by Keith Morris of ex-Black Flag/Circle Jerks, and Dimitri Coats of ex-Burning Bridges have released a music video, a ramped-up cover of Metallica’s 1991 record “Holier Than Thou,” which will be on The Metallica Blacklist that is due out on Sept. 10. The duo also unveiled two new members: bassist Autry Fulbright II, and drummer Justin Brown. The video for their take on “Holier Than Thou,” which is filmed like a sitcom and filled with humor, depicts a dirty pastor attempting to fulfill his not so pastor-esque desires while vulgarly antagonizing his altar boys about “lost profits” in the church. Following the first three minutes, OFF!, now standing...
