Evil Mothers - Spider Sex and Car Wrecks

Year: 1997
Label: Alternative Tentacles
Style: Industrial
Location: The 99 Cent Store
Medium: CD
Condition: New
Dollar diamond or dud: Dud

Info: I've often said that the only time that it really pays to know about music is when you're hunting around the bargain bins, but, sadly, that same knowledge can burn you when it comes boiling over. Case in point, I turned over the hideously titled Spider Sex and Car Wrecks in the 99 Cent Store and saw these two tidbits that ultimately swayed me to part with my pocket change:

Produced by Martin Atkins.
Alternative Tentacles Records Ltd.

The breakdown: You probably know Martin Atkins even if you think you don't. He's done time in Killing Joke and Swans and maned the skins for PIL.

Alternative Tentacles, on the other hand, has been putting out trailblazing shit in most punk-related genres for years now. It's Jello Biafra's label. Within their ranks, at one time or another, has resided bands like Amebix, the Butthole Surfers, Comets on Fire, the Melvins, Neurosis, Nomeansno, and on and on and on.

So, to me at least, this seemed like a can't miss purchase. Mistake. Evil Mothers is pretty by-the-numbers industrial dreck, right down to the tribal drumming, silly atmospherics, and the cringe-inducing songwriting choices. The whole album kind of sounds like a band trying to play a Download album...slowly. I honestly don't like a lot of industrial, so this could very well be another man's treasure, but, really, I would've expected better and, well, anything after examining the clues that the back cover provided; like an all-girl band in the Jesus Lizard mold, a Pigface clone,...something...anything... Ugh.

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Scheer - Infliction

Year: 1996
Label: 4AD
Style: Alt. Rock/Shoegazer
Location: The 99 Cent Store
Medium: CD
Condition: New (sealed)
Dollar diamond or dud: Diamond

Info: I always thought that the back of the local 99 Cent Store was filled with Muzak rejects and soft jazz abortions, not well-regarded mid-'90s rock from a label that boasts the likes of indie heroes such as The Birthday Party, The Pixies, and the Cocteau Twins. I also wasn't expecting something like this based on the cover art that would be more fitting on some kind of nu-metal/aggro-rock disaster. Instead, Scheer is a noisy female-fronted alt. rock band that sounds like something that would result from the Cranberries and Swervedriver fucking (i.e. big ass guitars anchoring some fairly catchy hooks, Irish accent-inflected singing, and a bit of jangle below all that distortion and foot-triggered atmospherics). Anyway, this was their debut full-length for the label before "contractual disagreements" pushed them off 4AD and their follow-up back to '00 (I've heard, although I can't confirm, that the breathy Audrey Gallagher sang techno in the meantime. That's a mighty cred-crumbler). With this one, though, the band saw some chart time with two singles and even had a couple of videos that you can see down below. This, of course, makes it even harder to figure out why this was sitting near the bottom of a decaying box in a place that'll sell you English Leather cologne ("musk" scented, even) for a penny less than a paper Washington; especially since this is pretty decent.

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