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Red Red Meat

Bunny Gets Paid Sub Pop

Three things caught my attention when I saw Red Red Meat live at the William Shatner (Captain Kirk!) Ballroom about two years ago. First, singer/guitarist Tim

% Rutilli, a tiny man, was sandwiched between two behemoth guitar and bass players. This gave the effect of an inverted normal curve. Second, Red Red Meat put up a pretty good show. Third, and really more of a non-impression, they were blown away by killer sets by Eugenius and Urge Overkill, and I promptly forgot them.

Bunny Gets Paid is my introduction to Red Red Meat on record. I don’t know if they’ve changed their style or if they just sound different in the studio, but this album is quite a departure from what I heard in concert. It sounds like an awful racket on the first play, but it grows on the listener. They beat up on their acoustic guitars pretty bad, and I won’t even speculate as to what they do to their electric ones. Still, the whole thing is heartfelt, and that translates in Rutilli’s voice. He often sound like Kurt Cobain when the Late One got emotional, which was pretty rare.

This is rootsy, moody stuff. There’s something very soothing about hearing lyrics like “your better days are all behind you now” to the sound of an almost ethereal unplugged guitar. Nothing is particularly uplifting, not even the album-ending cover of ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’, but it somehow leaves me with a happy feeling. This is a record for a rainy day, just perfect for our weather. And guess what? Bunny Gets Paid is a much better record than either Eugenius’ or Urge Overkill’s last records.

bs Samuel beralme-Remis

Green Day

lwtomnminc

Warner

This one pretty much sucks. While I am one of the few people (actually the only person) at the OP that does not loathe Green Day, I must confess that teat |’m not much impressed by

Insomniac. All the songs blur together.

Some have said that GD are a regurgitation of real punk - y’know, The Ramones, Sex Pistols, etc., but I see a difference. Lyrically, well, they’re pretty much copying all punk that ever was. But, and this is potentially their only redeeming quality, that lead vocalist (what’s his name?) could sing the skin off of a snake.

Perhaps you’ve seen the video for ‘Geek Stink Breath,’ the one that graphically illustrates dental extraction. Yum. Or perhaps somebody just told you about it. Nothing like a little controversy to attract the interest of the purchasing public, because there is nothing else to Insomniac.

As the case happens to be, pop music supports itself by rarely veering from proven success. Each song on Jnsomniac is a xerox of the two songs from their previous release, Dookie, that garnered the most airplay. You know which ones I’m referring to... But, the neatest, groovin’est tracks on Dookie were the rarest; the hidden track; and the variant from form, F.O.D.

I’ve seen snippets of GD covering 80’s pop, in their own special way, and that’s what I like. Some originality. However...yawn, this one just puts me to sleep.

bs doxce Robinson

Hamilton’s Vargay have breathed new life into} the Canadian metal scene with Oxygen, not an easy; feat considering all that® remains, aside from struggling local scenes kept on life-support by diehard fans, are the rotting cadavers of mid-80s bands such as Killer Dwarfs and Kick Axe. (Let’s not even discuss Toronto’s Slik Toxik and their attempt to cash in on 80s pretty-boy metal several years too late - this sentence is already more press than they deserve.) And Lee Aaron never was much of a Metal Queen, despite the moniker.

Judging by the Judas Priest and Black Sabbath covers Varga played at the Town Pump a year-and-a-half ago while touring in support of their debut, Prototype, they grew up listening to much the same stuff as any other head-banging, middle-class, white-boy from the suburbs - Priest, Sabbath, Ozzy, Kiss, AC/DC, etc. The key to their sound lies in the synthesis of these influences with newer elements. Both Prototype and Oxygen show industrial influences in their use of samples and rhythmic sequence patterns that throb along under the live drums. Varga are no slaves to technology, though; it serves them. The samples and hi-tech effects are always subtle, never

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They stretch out a little more on this album than on Prototyp fusing jazz and, who woulda thunk it?, hiphop elements into a coup of tracks (‘Skeletons’ and ‘So Real,’ respectively). ‘So Real’ mak the connection between metal and funk that I keep trying to poi out to friends; both come from the Land of Groove. ‘Needlestac even features some mildly deranged hillbilly violin. All this is not say you won’t get a taste of flat-out heaviness on this album. ‘T] Passage’ features bone-crunching bottom-end thud in the finest met tradition.

If you need a fix of something on the heavy side and fe like contributing to the Canadian GNP, go get a hit of Oxygen, no

available at a CD pusher near you. bs Kevin dallox

New York’s John Zorn is one of the most prolific modern composers alive today. He has explored a full range of styles including free jazz, blues punk, grindcore, noisecore, movie scores, and twentieth centur experimental composition.

Some of his more acclaimed projects have been Naked Cit Masada, Cobra, Painkiller, and his free jazz tribute to Ornett Coleman, Spy v. Spy. Kristallnacht (1993) is one of many re-issue on his new Tzadik label, and is considered to be the premiere wor. of Radical Jewish Culture.

Kristallnacht, for the historically inept, was a pre-holocaus event in Nazi Germany, where the storefront windows were shattere: by masses of Germans caught in the fervour of Hitler’s rhetoric Zorn captures the senselessness, the dissonance, horror and despai of the whole event within his composition.

Most of the music in Kristallnacht is rooted in Klezme (Eastern European Jewish folk music) and mixes with jazz an grindcore, as well as the more modern and:experimental ends of th spectrum with samples (including snippets of the “One Republic One People” speech made by Adolf Hitler) and deconstruction. A the disk progresses the traditional themes become brief through th interruption of the disorientating deconstruction of the new music.

The track ‘Never Again’ is perhaps the single best piece o performance art ever recorded. It has a warning that it “contain high frequency extremes at the limits of human hearing and beyond which may cause nausea, headaches ani ringing in the ears. Prolonged or repeate: listenings [are] not advisable as it ma’ result in temporary or permanent ea damage.”

Zorn wants you to understand th horror of this event. If you are not sickene: by this tragic event of racial hatred tha eventually lead to the systematic genocid of six million Jews (as well as five millio other assorted peoples), then he will mak you sick through the manipulation o sound.

Yet, the track can hurt you if yo listen to it for to long, or listen to i repeatedly. This is like the Jewis. experience of W.W.II. One should alway remember what happened, but one has t move beyond it or else be damaged by | eventually.

‘Shtetl’ is perhaps the mos traditional of all the tracks, with it’s classi Klezmer phrasing and instrumentatior while ‘Barzel’ is the most modern with it industrial, grindcore anger. Mind you, it i a bit difficult to break down Kristallnach track by track, as each piece contributes t the whole composition.

Kristallnacht is an album for thos

ue a oe And say that he is HELP STOP who like the exploration’s of moder ae CHILD ABUSE- music. It is a strong statement and music Nobody will let him be himself. So TREAT GAY TEENS So ret eee notes ee eat he hid F his fends. hi degcend into the depths of propagandz tiie ve nny es WITH THE However this album may be a bit extrem Ones fare LOVE AND for the timid and shy. For the those peopl ; : < who are interested in Klezmer, or Klezme 7 sour h - “ee Se eee RESPECT THE) withamore modemattack, I would sugge: ae Seen? DESERVE that they pick up John Zorn’s Masad« ten: soit Masada is a quartet that fuses free jazz wit _— Klezmer, and is highly accessible to thos AKON nn \ = a __— jst starting out as experimenters i | WIP } modern music. es by Bysun dicdman: SE ac