Truth be told, the vast majority of black metal artists are no more harmful than Vincent Price and Edgar Allan Poe were; they might be fascinated with the dark side and talk about it convincingly, but they aren't really living the evil they focus on. Mayhem, however, are another matter; the bandmembers took their obsession with evil and darkness to the extreme in the 1990s, when a murder, a suicide, an act of cannibalism, and a variety of satanic, anti-Christian activity all became part of the Norwegian headbangers' disturbing history…
Celebrate the arrival of this new decade with Julian Cope’s rampant new album SELF CIVIL WAR. Crammed with songs that reach deep inside you, each possessed of its own micro-worldview, SELF CIVIL WAR showcases Cope’s songwriting at its most searching since JEHOVAHKILL. Road-testing the zeitgeist with kitchen sink psycho-dramas like ‘A Dope on Drugs’, ‘Your Facebook, My Laptop’ and ‘Billy’, SELF CIVIL WAR also showcases the insightful Heroic Ballads ‘Einstein’ ‘You Will Be Mist’ and ‘The Great Raven’. In typical Cope stylee, the 13 songs of SELF CIVIL WAR brim with sound FX, enormous orchestral arrangements, timeless uprisings of Ur-folk and hefty near-Krautrock anthems. It’s the first release in Cope’s ‘Our Troubled Times’ series, and a fine temporary refuge from our daily bombardment by media luvvies and fuckhead world leaders who take us all for idiots.
2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the hugely influential Philadelphia International Records. To mark this, and following our reissue of some of the labels other acts such as the Three Degrees, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes and the O’Jays, we are pleased to present another album from one of the most identifiable voices of the Philly Sound. WAR OF THE GODS reached R&B #12 and Pop #110 upon its release in 1973. Some of the artists backing Billy on this album are Bobby Eli, Bunny Sigler, Norman Harris, Leon Huff and Ron Baker.
Opening with the ominous, fiery protest of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," War immediately announces itself as U2's most focused and hardest-rocking album to date. Blowing away the fuzzy, sonic indulgences of October with propulsive, martial rhythms and shards of guitar, War bristles with anger, despair, and above all, passion…