August 8, 2024
August 2023: MY MIC SOUNDS NICE! The headset microphone era of Grave Convulsions is OVER and we are verging on competent DIY audio production. I was also still unemployed at this point, which still sucked.
Some updates on episode 136 for 2024: The Great Kat’s webstore still looks like a Geocities page. I haven’t bought either a cool bootleg Great Kat shirt or her used lingerie, I’ve got a job now but I haven’t quite got it like that yet. I made my return to the pages of Decibel after a few years away with a review of Negative Prayer’s debut LP Self//Wound in February of this year. Fugitive vocalist Seth Gilmore seems to have replaced the late Riley Gale in Power Trip. And Necrophagia’s Season of the Dead is still PWYW on Bandcamp so get on it.
Like I say in the intro to this show, I’m not a metal purist, and I mentioned last post that I was always wary about playing too much non-metal music on a platform called “Gimme Metal.” They promised metal streaming 24/7, I didn’t want to make them false advertisers. But as Grave Convulsions expanded its palette from just black and death metal to include punk rock, industrial music, dungeon synth, even video game soundtracks, it was inevitable that hip-hop would make its way in there somehow.
In 2016, Toxic Holocaust mastermind Joel Grind released the Memphis Devil Shit mixtape, a collection of grimy, lo-fi horrorcore rap spawned from the city in the wake of Three 6 Mafia’s tremendously influential early releases. This was a genuinely underground DIY scene, with countless obscure Memphis artists pumping out tapes that collectors pay absurd prices for today. (Peeling Flesh have basically built a gimmick off sampling Memphis rap between slams and aping mixtape aesthetics.)
Memphis Devil Shit is a solid and highly recommended primer on the sound, and most importantly, it introduced me to Krucifix Klan and “Gimi Sum,” the first of only three hip-hop songs I ever played on Grave Convulsions. (The other two were Dr. Octagon’s “I’m Destructive,” which has guitar and very nearly had an incredible connection to the GxCx intro, and a track from the Dungeon Rap compilation.) “Gimi Sum” has synths that Mortiis would trade his ears for, a prominent sample of heavy metal icon Butt-Head, and as many references to violent murder as at least a half dozen Slayer songs. If that’s not a Grave Convulsion, what is?
The playlist for Grave Convulsions episode 135 was complete before the announcement of Gimme’s closing, so it was made with the assumption that it’d air on Gimme. Episode 136 is the first post-Gimme playlist, and with the show no longer on a “Metal” platform I could truly play whatever I wanted. Obviously, it’s still mostly underground extreme metal, but it was time to get wacky, DIY style. The amazing Trauma Team Online webstore hipped me to Children of the Corn and Maniac. Death’s Possessed by the Ouija Board was described on an old blog post as one of the weirdest horrorcore albums ever, so obviously I had to hear it. black caligula was a random social media/Bandcamp discovery and i will fight god is an outstanding title for a release. Psychopathic madman…. Psychopathic madman…. Psychopathic madman…. Psychopathic madman….
In the spirit of freeform radio, I’m as psyched as I can be to announce that Grave Convulsions is back on the newly relaunched East Village Radio, every other Sunday from 6-8pm ET starting Sunday, July 28. Former Gimme Metal program director Brian Turner, a legend of wild radio, is EVR’s new station manager; he’s assembled a diverse slate of shows including my fellow Gimme alum MT Casket’s Death Rattle and a couple of other metal-adjacent shows, and I will be live in the EVR storefront studio on 1st Ave. in Manhattan. It’s same show you know and love, I’ve got some interesting guests lined up, and I hope you’ll check it out. Meantime, enjoy episode 136!
GRAVE CONVULSIONS episode 136
- The Great Kat – Satan Goes to Church (Worship Me or Die!)
- Negative Prayer – Morbid (Negative Prayer)
- Fugitive – Hell's Half Acre (Maniac)
- Necrophagia – Forbidden Pleasure (Season of the Dead)
- Disincarnate – Confine of Shadows (Soul Erosion)
- Ch'Ahom – The Decapitator (Camazotz Cult)
- Veriluola – Regal Barbarism (Cascades of Crimson Cruor)
- Thanatomass – Living Tombs of Tartaros (Hades)
- Hexakosioihexekontahexaphilia – Always One Step Too Far (Demo DCLXVI)
- Kaal Akuma – Tiyanak (Turiya)
- Menstrual Vampires – Bestial Encounter (Menstrual Vampires)
- Nekus – Stygian (Sepulchral Divination)
- Krucifix Klan – Gimi Sum Part 2 (Da Last Krucifixin)
- Death – Possessed (Daytime) (Possessed by the Ouija Board)
- Children of the Corn – Evil Interlude (The Single)
- Black Caligula – Sleep Creep (i will fight god.)
- Maniac – Psychopathic Mad Man (The World of a Psycho)
- Pa Vesh En – Following the Pestilent Maiden (Martyrs)
- Sieluhaaska – Kaaoksen syleilyyn (Kun aurinkoni kuoli)
- Heimland – Iskald Raatten Jord (Forfedrenes Taarer)
- V:XII – Hivemind Nation (Lu-Cipher Sabbatean)
- Pustulous Pilate – Timeliness (Split w/ Coward Kill Coward)
- Lord Mortvm – God of Suffering (Dead Christ Baptism)
- Perverted Ceremony – Necrolactation Unborn Goat (Sabbat of Behezaël)
- Impetigo – Trap Them and Kill Them (Horror of the Zombies)
- Macabre – What the Heck Richard Speck (Eight Nurses You Wrecked) (Sinister Slaughter)
- Apartment 213 – Kill tor Christ (Discography)
- Dahmer – Laceration (Our Worst Recordings)
- Crossed Out – Locked In (Discography: 1990-1993)
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Suppression with Bastard Noise – The Glad Hand (Shit Clique) (Infernal Legions)
—Anthony Bartkewicz