Darren “Deicide” Kramer
The Jersey Devil is Here
Ever Reviled Records
http://www.everreviledrecords.com
Reviewed by Kent Manthie
Deicide’s back and this time ‘round he’s got that raw, bluesy feel to it that’s more like his debut CD than the sophomore disc he put out a couple years ago; it had more complexity and stuff that just was to “layered” in the end and took away from what made it the unique Deicide album – raw, raucous, just him and a Stratocaster or Dobro crooning in a boozy, shrill way, with much feeling.
This new disc, The Jersey Devil is Here, sees Darren take away much of the frills added in previously and this time focused on the intensity of the tunes – which is high in most cases – he’s got a story to tell or something to get off his chest, a political statement, a critique of society or just a song with cryptic, personal references to people in his life, et cetera.
The album starts out grandly with “Won’t You?” and chugs along from there into “Napalm, Death and Fire” then, on the title track, he takes seven minutes to drown in personal demons, introspective oddities, with an eerie, guitar-driven ghostly sound that accompanies it all. Then “The Cocaine Song” is a ‘fuck it’ song, wherein when things seem to be at a nadir, screw it all and get loaded, an eight ball of coke and a bottle of Wild Turkey.
In some ways, Deicide comes across as a sort of cross between Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, with a little Alice Cooper thrown in for theatrics and histrionics.
It’s good to see that Deicide has made it through the hardest part and survived whatever slings and arrows came his way after his first two CDs as well as the deserved praise he received that, no doubt, kept him confident combined with a cult following, a devoted fan base that probably means more to him than selling records, except when it comes to these guys.
A couple other standouts include “Hudson River Hangover”, wherein Cooper croons a melancholy, late-night-early morning kind of mood music and “This Lonesome Road”, a sad, bluesy wailing lament of a song, no doubt from a depressing memory stuck in his head.
The CD, as a whole, though, really is a worthwhile and captivating event that devoted fans as well as those looking for something new and unique to feast on will eat up like mad. - Kent Manthie

Writer
Blood Drops
Self-Released
http://www.writertheband.com
This relatively unknown band from San Diego: Writer, they call themselves, made up of Andy & James Ralph and Eli Bowser. Now, being “relatively unknown” is not at all pejorative, it merely goes to show that there is great, smart, unique and original music being made out there, out of the cloying, thieving eyes of the “music industry” (as Consolidated sang in “Weakness”, the biz is made up of “child molesters and mafia Nazis…”)
Anyway, Blood Drops is the third DIY release by this trio of characters.
The whole CD – all seven songs of it – is a personality of many moods.
“Anymore” is an instrumental interlude between the first brilliant cut, “Matthew”. “Anymore” then slips seamlessly into “Don’t Wake the Sun”. Now then the last three songs on Blood Drops, “Start a War”, “Where Was I” and the title track that closes out Blood Drops are really hip, yet in a light all its own, sounding of low-fi, melancholy in a way that doesn’t sound feigned or over-emoted, which would’ve made it into an Emo record, gawd forbid, but, rather, it’s sung in an appropriately plaintive, emotional way, but without histrionics; a British sort of show of emotion – dry and with elegance even though they’re So-Cal as Skateboarding and taco stands. “Try and Stop Me” sounds like it was written by someone to whom Neil Young was a huge influence, it has a damn catchy cadence all the way through, wry, jaded but knowing lyrics.
All in all, though, there’s a catchy hook for all intelligent, high-brow music seekers. -KM.