Floor "Self Titled" LP

No Idea Records is, nowadays, kind of a joke amongst people who don't like "beard core", ie. watered down pop hardcore with really, really "gruff vocals", AKA bands who've listened to far too much Hot Water Music. I haven't really paid much attention to their output lately, but for a while, it seems that this was all they put out. But, back in their earlier days at least, they were a really diverse label and put out stuff that was all over the place. Case in point: the Floor self titled LP. If you haven't heard of Floor before, they played on and off from 1992 till 20004, before they broke up for good and formed the much more pop(ular) band Torche. Please don't dismiss this because you think Torche is cheesy. Whereas people refer to Torche as a "pop-doom" hybrid band (when in actuality they're just a poppy hardcore band with some slow songs), this actually lives up to that moniker. I honestly can't think of a single other band that really sounds like this (if you can, please, let me know). It's equal parts melodic pop anthem and crushingly heavy doom. I don't have any wacky stories or angry rants for this one, but according to iTunes, I've listened to this record more than anything else in my whole library. Best jams- "Figured Out" (I try to rip off that snare-crash triplet thing he does whenever possible), "Scimitar", "Downed Star". Just check it out, man.


download here

Saint Vitus- "Born Too Late"

Brooklyn is a pretty shitty place. Don't get me wrong, I like it OK. But, there's just so many fucking assholes. From the bloated, 45 year old mess of a woman in the vomit-stained and not at all ironically worn "Baby Girl" t-shirt staring at you like you're the freak, to the crack head in the fried food store who get's pissed and acts casually threatening in response to the $.75 you just gave him because he "needs $2.00" and "just got out of Rikers", and can't you just "help him out" because really, I guess $.75 isn't helping a guy out, even though it's seventy five cents more than the 8 other people who didn't even acknowledge his genital wart infested ass gave him, and really, you just want some fucking fried chicken but it's deal with ole genital wart or go get chinese food, and its all I can do not to scream at this fucking huge slice of turd pie at the Chinese food joint who's screaming at the poor little Asian man behind the counter because an eggroll is fifteen cents cheaper down the block (I don't really get what system of logic he's using; mine says to go down the block, but maybe fucktard is on a higher, uh, evolutionary plane than me or something) and uhhh... yeah. So, there's a lot of assholes. Don't even get me started on the teenagers (more on teenagers later) or the crybaby fashion victims that line the gold paved streets of Williamsburg.

I was going somewhere with this... oh. Life in Brooklyn is fun, but it can get kind of heavy, like Saint Vitus's "Born Too Late". Strap on the old headphones and crank this to the point of painful, and it makes it alot easier to say "fuck it" to the fact that the dude standing in front of you on the bus won't get his fucking crotch out of your face, or that it's illegal to decapitate pubescents, even though the seventh graders at the bus stop wouldn't stop pointing and laughing at you

Their S/T record seems to get a more credit, but this is, in my opinion, a far superior album. The lyrics are the perfect combination of the absurd and the right on ("Every time I'm on the street/people laugh and point at me./They talk about my length of hair/and the out of date clothes I wear."). The riffs are fucking crushing. The cover of "Thirst and Miserable" rivals the original. These are the motherfuckers who invented doom metal, at their peak. You should have this, but if you don't just fucking download it.

Download