New Material From Three Local Solo Acts, Plus An Inactive Band Note!!

For your Wednesday afternoon reading, here is our first proper news post of May 2021, which is mostly devoted to the recent exploits from three very different local solo musicians, two relating to new albums of some kind. To cap things off, we do have a note on a band moved out of our active band links. With all of that said, here's what you should know!

 

Local punk solo project Slumshine have new stuff to talk about, including a couple of new songs! On April 19th, Brent posted a new original song named "Believe In Hugs" to Slumshine's Bandcamp page and via this Facebook slideshow video, marking the project's first released new material since their 2019 "SLMSHN" album. Then on Sunday, Slumshine posted another new song named "Slumlord" onto Facebook, and owing to it's longer length, that's embedded below. In fact, "Slumlord" is reportedly the title track for Slumshine's new EP, which will appaerently be released on Friday! If this is the same release as the previously teased "SllMSHN" (with two lowercase Ls to denote album #2), a physical run on cassette tapes would likely follow. With all of that said, I won't review the two new songs yet, pending our full review of the "Slumlord" EP, but the music on offer so far is thematically different from the first tape.

Notably, "Believe In Hugs" has electric instrumentation (live shows and the "SLMSHN" album were all acoustic), and both songs seem to have more of a spacey influence, but we'll see how the full EP sounds on Friday. Give "Slumlord" a listen below, and we'll have more on the EP proper soon!

Next up, here's some more new release action from a local solo project, as cybergrind act Malignant Neoplasm have released their own new album "Hugz" on their Bandcamp page on April 28th! The fact that both MxNx and Slumshine happen to have songs with a variant of "Hugs" in their names is purely coincidental. If you're familiar with Tyler's Blood Shed Productions output, you can expect more of his usual trademarks on "Hugz", including pig squeal vocals, a drum machine, divisive and provocative song titles, and often short runtimes (only four of the songs exceed 64 seconds in length, and one runs for just 12 seconds), but compared to C.T.W., there is more of a computerized post-production influence. This brand of noise rock almost defies criticism (you either like it or you don't), but Tyler's bold, in-your-face approach can never be denied, and they're undeniably heavy!

Give "Milky Blue Eyes" a listen below courtesy of this video from Blood Shed's YouTube channel, though as it'll be over in 38 seconds, buy or stream "Hugz" above to hear more if you're up for it! The album is available on a "name your price" model, as are prior Malignant Neoplasm releases.

Also today, here's a new original song from local hard rock solo artist Tym Morrison's YouTube channel! Entitled "Heaven or Hell", the song is lyrically about how you ultimately have the choice where you go in the afterlife, and like his other recent original song postings, this has an attached video featuring lots of photos and video clips relevant to the very religious lyrics. Running for over eight minutes, this delivers the metal goods for fans of Tym's, especially the solo late, though the mid-tempo pacing does help the song proper drag a bit. Give Tym's new song a listen below!

Finally, I have moved local punk quartet The Sick Sons to our inactive band links due to a year's inactivity. The former Filthy Dadicals have not issued a public statement since their planned LopLops Lounge concert with the aforementioned Slumshine in March of last year was cancelled due to the then-new pandemic. One of 2019's most promising new local bands, The Sick Sons united former 12 Gauge Ready, Bankshot, and Downshift alumni for four concerts in the second half of that year, notably opening for Random Killing and The Ripcordz in their first two shows, before playing LopLops alongside Tidal Records acts twice that December. Hopefully their hiatus since March 2020 is solely due to the pandemic, and that we'll see The Sick Sons back when things level out, as they are a solid band whose momentum crash wasn't their fault. Best of luck to Lucas, Steve, Dave, and Clint in any event!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for a new news post on Friday or Saturday featuring details on "Slumdog" and more! Thanks everyone!