Ghoultown

Double set: Life After Sundown and Ghost of the Southern Son

(Zoviet / Angry Planet Enterprises)

It's been long years since I stopped puzzling how these men developed staggering musical proficiency, when all around stank of human decay and gun-hands from the netherworld sprang like wicked phantasms in midnight moments. Wiser, I concluded, to unquestioningly dig the merging of remorselessly lashed metal and arched Morricone airs that alternately hyper-pulse and unfurl in teasing ominousness, as ghastly Old-West-in-twilight-zones sagas bore into cerebra, never to be erased.

(This double-disc set is available directly from Blackburn's Monstro Merch, which is linked below.)

Recommended from Life: "Dead Outlaw," "Against a Crooked Sky," "Werewolves on Wheels," "I Spit on Your Grave," "Thunder over El Paso," "Find a Good Horse," "Drink With the Living Dead," "Under the Phantom Moon"

Videos: "Dead Outlaw"   "Against a Crooked Sky"   "Find a Good Horse"   "Drink With the Living Dead" (visualizer)   "Under the Phantom Moon"

Recommended from Ghost: "Southern Son," "Ghost of the Past," "I Am the Night," "Black on Black," "Blood, Bullets, and Whiskey," "Stick to Your Guns," "Tombstone," "Vanishing Riders"

Videos: "Southern Son"   "Ghost of the Past" (lyric video)   "I Am the Night"   "Stick to Your Guns"   "Vanishing Riders" (animated video)

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Blackburn's Monstro Merch

Back in the Day, 1974

Blue Öyster Cult

Secret Treaties

(Columbia / CBS))

Secret Treaties thrived on '74 U.S. charts for some 14 weeks, long before Eric Bloom and fellow metal-stringed cultists crooned of love's permanence despite the Reaper's inevitability. BOC commanded complex, cascading sheets of adamantium chordslides, killer riff-blitzes, and light-speed convolutions that surely were vital instructions for novice fret-neck throttlers the world over. All that and the staggering brainpower behind the Cult's fantastic lyrical spectacles (various pennings are by producer Sandy Pearlman, critic Richard Melzer, and singer/poet Patti Smith) meant such peers as were on the 1970s arena scene could only ponder their own stacked heels.

(In 1992, Treaties was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America. The LP was reissued, including by Sony and CD Media Records. A 2001, remastered CD contained five additional selections.)

Recommended: "Career of Evil," "Subhuman," "Dominance and Submission," "ME 262," "Cagey Cretins," "Harvester of Eyes," "Flaming Telepaths," "Astronomy"

Video: "Career of Evil"   "Dominance and Submission"   "Harvester of Eyes"   "Astronomy"

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Dr. Void

In Search of...B Sides: Echoes of the Plenetary Death Machine...

(Self-issued)

Fantastical Psychobilly reflected in smashed mirror-shards. The collected songs are said to represent five relative bands from the 1980s to 2016. What they share is uncanny: stuttered guitar flailings, hot pepper percussion that skitters unstoppably, and a whimsical sense of morbidity. Shoutings resound against otherworldliness. Bass delineates form. Fused into eerie amalgamation, all are propelled through starry, miles-high vistas at inhumanly adrenalized velocities. Novel adventurings constitute delectable bizarritude. And the Lord Acton cameo...

But that's only a partial portrait. Elsewhere are brutal volleys of more bottom-dollar Psycho character. Those reduce to smithereens everything dumb enough to stumble into their breakneck paths.

It is the contrast between strangely daring voyages and reliable pulverizings that locates this on a high shelf. 

Recommended: "Planetary Death," "Erosion Crisis," "Gaia's Revenge," "Die With You, Die With Me," "This Is the End"

Videos: "Planetary Death"   "Die With You, Die With Me"   

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