Monolith Cocktail Blog

‘Too Weird To Die, Too Rare To Live’

2012

Track List-

1. A Trip With El Cid  (4:20)

2. El Cid Zombie Chase  (3:22)

3. The Majestic Purple Bastard  (3:28)

4. The Microwave Clock Is Stuck On 12  (1:48)

5. Valkyrie Hymn (4:40)

Personnel-

Schmoog Lebowski: Bass, keyboards, mixing, programming, recording and vocals.

Caveman Geistreich: Additional Acid Mothers worship/peeling phantom flesh keyboards.

Jecklyn Hyde: Mastering.

Artwork: Lizz Cleland.

Blowing in from Ontario, Canada, on the cusp of an a cursed miasma; the indecorous psycho-doom sounds of Schmoog Lebowski, prompt such stunned responses as, “Jesus fucking Christ!!”, or, “What the Fuck?!!”.

Under the cryptic talisman moniker Swords of Texas – perhaps an allusion to some fabled southern Masonic lodges, or sub Bilderburg passage of rites – the former 13 Bags of Dick protagonist produces music to burn the “decadent” west to.

Stumbling like a raging goaded bull through the space-rock oscillation frenzy of both Hawkwind and the Acid Mothers Temple; the noisy guttural Nordic Krautrock of the Rain Kings; and the pulsation industrial techno of Throbbing Gristle.

With vocals so abstruse, gloomy and indecipherable, it’s the track titles that prove illuminating. Picking a fight with historical reverential icons, Lebowski drags the symbolic corpse of Catholic Spain’s 11^th century saviour, El Cid – the Castilian nobleman depicted so earnestly by Charlton Heston in Hollywood, fought with and alongside the Moors in his pursuit of both creating his own fiefdom, and of securing Valencia – through a LSD-seeped mire of dirge and drone paranoia, over a two-act maelstrom.

‘A Trip With El Cid’ pours liquid hallucinations down our throats and rambles growling utterances to a psycho-metal caked soundtrack, before slipping into the motoring, death drive, and Jess Franco schlock-horror ‘El Cid Zombie Chase’ – a track that sounds like a flick-knife rumble between Magma and the Dead Meadow, in a syringe strewn squat.

The malodorous vapour of glum continues as Satan, or one of his demonic servants, ominously casts a shadow over the final judgement, on the dreadcore of ‘The Majestic Purple Bastard’, whilst ‘Valkyrie Hymn’ is more black magic incantation then Teutonic eulogy to Wagner.

Lebowski’s style of chain-rattling doom and stoner-rock fortunately avoids falling into the usual clichés of the dark arts; pushing away from drawn-out one-note boring opuses for a heavier cacophonic atmosphere. ‘Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die’ is a stellar trip into an unholy cosmos; a real gas!