2011 ain’t over til it’s over (!!!)

This weird year is almost done and everybody is banging out their lists of favorite elpeez. I feel the pressure, and new releases are largely limited to nothing but Rihanna ceedeez and obscenely priced box sets at this point, but my procrastination paid off (for once) because Chris Connelly is back and banging on my ears.

It feels good.

The plan this week was to finally get on Eric Bachmann’s fine new Crooked Fingers offering Breaks In The Armour.  I had a concept in my head for the comic, and spent most of last week soaking up it’s natural charms, but then the game suddenly changed on Monday. As I was dorking around on Facebook after work, I noticed an ad on the right-hand side of the screen for Chris Connelly’s Artificial Madness. Instantly, my mind was teeming with question marks, bobbling at the ends of sentences like “what the fuck” and “how did I miss this” and “whatamIgonnadooooooodeadlineishoursaway…”

Well, I clicked the ad (of course), and was taken to a three-song stream. That was pretty much that. “Artificial Madness” is the opener and the first track on the free stream. It rocks, and all that old, dormant Wax! Trax! love welled up inside me like a flash flood. According to the Relapse Records website, Connelly recorded the elpee with “…current and former members of Nachtmystium, Wolves In The Throne Room, Minsk, Indian, and more.” Full disclosure: I have not heard a note from any of those bands, and I have no idea who they are. Also, I had no time to research who played what on what song, but I’ll tell you this: the bass on drum on guitar action on Artificial Madness is nuclear hot, in contrast to Connelly’s uber-cool, disaffected Bowie-sexy narration. So while I’m blowing my Chinese computer speakers up listening to that first track, my fuzzy sets of thoughts quickly began running a comparative analysis with THE DAMAGE MANUAL.

Oh… The Damage Manual: Chris Connelly at the mic, Jah Wobble to his left, Geordie Walker to his right, and Martin Atkins behind them all, bashing his kit beyond all recognition with those brutal, 10 lb mitts of his. They only made one proper studio elpee, but it was a monster that couldawouldashoulda destroyed the competition. For once, (JUST ONCE!), The Damage Manual was a band that looked good on paper and sounded even better. Connelly’s new ensemble doing the damage on this new elpee may or may not look all that great on paper, but the sound and urgent fury are there for the duration of Artificial Madness. I downloaded the deluxe edition onto my iphone, and went late into the night with it, listening while drawing and doing the Photoshop assemblage. “Wait For Amatuer” (the track Connelly chose to shoot a music video for) follows the title track, keeps up the thrashing pace, which carries on through nearly the entire project, with the exception of the slightly-broody “The Parrafin Hearts”, the only point in the elpee where Connelly has an effete moment.

So, if’n yer one of the lucky few that heard and enjoyed The Damage Manual, get ready to do some year end list adjustments. Connelly is back and doing some serious damage of his own.