Fear Is Not Conscience
(Total Life Society - TLS005) CD $13.00
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals).
Vulgar Defender
(Total Life Society - TLS004) CD $13.00
One of two albums released simultaneously, recorded at Phantom Center, Brooklyn, during the summer of 2011 with Don Godwin. Heavies from Necking, Oneida, The Electric Eels, Borbetomagus, and The Flying Luttenbachers abound: Nick Lesley (guitar), Kid Millions (drums), John Morton (guitar, theremin), Jim Sauter (saxophone), Weasel Walter (bass), Matthew Wascovich (vocals), Don Godwin (keyboards, backing vocals).
No Endowments
(Total Life Society - TLS001) LP $15.00
Cleveland, Ohio based wordsmith Matthew Wascovich leads this amorphous unit of avant-rockers in a noisy fusion of hardcore word choice and houserocking skronkitude. Raw, high energy tracks loaded with avant-rock jamming and intense lyrical explorations remiscent of a Stooges-damaged Saccharine Trust. With Andrew Klimek (X-Blank-X, Johnny & The Dicks), Scott Pickering (My Dad Is Dead, Happy Flowers), Weasel Walter (The Flying Luttenbachers, XBXRX) and others. Our prom date at Weirdo Records describes their sound as "dispossession and discontent that could be from 1972 or now.... [V]isions of 8mm movies flickering aimlessly over the eternally dilapidated streets of Cleveland."
Sensational Grade
(Total Life Society - TLS003) CD $13.00
The third album by self-described "anti-heroes with no message [who] exist so that you don’t have to.... Distortion. Bass and drums that make you move. Guitars that make you feel sick or alive. Vocals that you cannot relate to most of the time." It used to be that performing rock music was a kind of evocation of Washington crossing the Delaware -- the famous painting of him standing in the boat with his crew, on their way to meet their fate, confident, proud, ready to be who they are and do what they do. Nowadays, it evokes a senior citizen getting paid minimum wage to stand by the front door and say "Welcome to K-Mart" to everyone who walks in. So in that way, Scarcity Of Tanks is a throwback to a consciousness where sincerity and a fighting spirit were enough, before everything became the product of arcane calculation, the most common side effects of which are cringes and grimaces, and yet that's acceptable if the money's there. You're gonna get taken higher, and it's gonna get done by Matthew Wascovich, Dave Cintron, Jeff Deasy, Brent Gemmill, Theodore Wiggs Null Flynn The Younger, Andrew Klimeyk, John Petkovic, Scott "Puff Tube" Pickering, so fucking get with it, grayballs. Recorded by Brent Gemmill in Cleveland, Ohio, during the summer of 2010 and early 2011, mixed by Don Godwin and mastered by Weasel Walter. Cover by Aleksandra Waliszewska.
Bleed Now
(Total Life Society - TLS002) CD $13.00
Scarcity frontman Matthew Wascovich is surrounded by veteran musicians who are also painters, writers, and heavy thinkers -- drummer Scott Pickering (Spike in Vain, My Dad Is Dead), guitarist Theodore Wiggs Nulls Flynn the Younger, and bassist Sebastian Wagner. Feeling like both a revival and a step forward, Bleed Now mixes classic punk with art and improv, in particular the authoritative heft of Saccharine Trust and Slovenly, the raucous blurt of Cleveland forefathers Electric Eels and Easter Monkeys, and the grit and pulse of Flipper and Suicide. Cover art by Tim Kerr (Big Boys, Total Sound Group Direct Action Committee). Insound calls it "intelligent, impressionistic free-rock ... an earful of splenetic discordance," while Pink Eye goes one further and calls it "a minor-masterpiece. Churning bass lines ... improvisational jazz motifs, spoken word, jagged Stoogesque guitars ... kind of like some art-punk-rocking-jazz-poet jam gone crazy for a night on mushrooms.... Most of the songs are pretty simple, riding a key through to the end –- falling in and out of chaos, the tempos change but the groove remains present."