Sunday, October 24, 2010

Angel Rot
"Screw Drive"

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Angel Rot
Screw Drive
7" single
(Fuck Records, 199?)

After guitarist Tom Five was unceremoniously booted from White Zombie in the late '80s, he started a new lil' trio that took all the ugly, metallic edge of WZ and amped it. Now, don't get me wrong, WZ continued to be a great band, but in a very different direction than before. In effect, we ended up with two killer metal bands where previously there had been just one.

This single was Angel Rot's first release, and I think it's close to perfection. The song rocks, the guitar work is stellar, the vocals are nice and raw, and it sounds like it was all recorded with one microphone dangled over the band while they played. A second 7" followed, Necrostrangle, then they seemingly vanished. Seven or so years passed, and all of a sudden there was a CD, finally, and they were touring, even! I saw them twice here in Atlanta, and they kicked some major posterior. Then, they vanished again. They were allegedly working on a new EP at the time, and the new songs they were playing totally slayed.

T_T

Both this song and Necrostrangle were rerecorded for the album, Unlistenable Hymns of Indulgent Damnage, so I decided to go with this track.

By the way, White Zombie's two releases with Tom on guitar, Psycho-head Blowout and Soul-Crusher, are compiled in the Let Sleeping Corpses Lie box set, which spans their entire career, and all 78 gazillion different guitarists they had. It destroys!

2 biased opinions:

Devil Dick said...

good stuff indeed.... i still need the 1st WZ record....

Lightning Baltimore said...

As do I! I'll live with the four tracks being on the box set, for now, since that dang record usually seems to be around $400 whenever I see it on-line.