Looking for Maryland/DC based contributors.

We are currently looking to expand our contributor output here a bit at MINDGRINDER and need writers based in the mid-atlantic region to help out with album reviews and show spots. Experience with HTML and web design is a major plus. Contact here if interested.

--fred

LAST MINDGRINDER EVER?! Tonight at 10PM EST time on WMUCRADIO.COM

I know I'm a lying piece of shit when it comes to our posting ambitions but I would reaaaalllllyyyy appreciate it if some of you tuned into the show tonight...which may be the last airing of our show on WMUC. Tune in, call in (301.314.8800) with requests/banter, help us close out with a bang rather than a pathetic little death rattle. The show is tonight at 10PM Eastern time on wmucradio.com.

Playlists from this semester
WMUC Live Internet Stream

--fred

Update - New Radio Schedule

Long time no update! It's been a pretty long fruitful summer full of job hunting and moving and now I feel like I finally have the time to get back up to pace with the blog and reboot the radio show for one more year. The schedule for WMUC's upcoming Autumn semester has been posted with MINDGRINDER re-taking Tuesdays at 10PM-12AM, our former timeslot that we held down from Fall 2008-Spring 2009. Unfortunately, Trey is no longer a permanent co-host on the show, but he, along with Hasan from Death By Hanger, is still a member on the blog, so hopefully their contributions will help alleviate some of the downtime in the next year. I'm still shopping around for some more people who might want to contribute to an already established blog, so if you're interested, shoot me an email. Anywho, thanks for the support from those of you that still visit the site and have added us on facebook. We'll be back soon with some tunes.

--fred

First Radio Show of 2010 Tonight!

FIRST MINDGRINDER TONIGHT on WMUC (wmucradio.com)!

Grind, Crust, Thrash, Hardcore, and Sludge

Tune in at 9PM (eastern) til midnight here

Requests: (301)314-8800

Dry Clouds, Revolta, and Radamanthys live on WMUC tonight at 6PM-9PM EST

Listen in live online (or on 88.1fm if you're in the College Park Area) to MINDGRINDER's 3rd Third Rail tonight at 6PM EST on wmucradio.com!

Dry Clouds - Old School emo-violence from Baltimore
Revolta - Thrash from the Chesapeake Bay Area
Radamanthys - Death/Thrash from Takoma Park

Listen live to WMUC here

--fred

MINDGRINDER: First Show Tonight!

First show of the semester tonight at 10pm eastern! Listen live with the player embedded above!

{Stoner, Sludge, Doom, Grind, Crust and Violence}

MINDGRINDER: New Schedule (Revision)

MINDGRINDER! Now on MONDAY evenings from 10pm-12am (eastern) starting NEXT week!

{Stoner, Sludge, Doom, Grind, Crust and Violence}

wmucradio.com

MINDGRINDER REMINDER

We're doing our last show of the semester tonight--it'll be a best-of spring '09 show; a collection of our favorite tracks played over the past few months, along with a few new tracks, including a couple off of Magrudergrind's new Self-Titled LP and the debut of a brand new 'Behold! The Monolith' track from their new album due to be released sometime over the summer. Show runs from 10pm-12am (eastern time zone). Feel free to call in!

--fred

An Update!

So...what's going on in our world? Finals week is upon us and I have a whole lot of reading and studying to catch up on if I plan to continue my college career (so don't get all butthurt if I don't respond right away to your meritless mass-email about the country/folk singer your shitty advertising agency is trying to promote...my hands are full.) I figured I might drop some music on you guys...you know, update for the first time in a week...let you know we're still into what we're doing here.

First off, I want to note that next Tuesday will be the last airing of MINDGRINDER for the spring semester of '09 on WMUC. We'll be doing our usual end of the year thing; recycled favorites and all. We'll also be playing another brand new 'Behold! The Monolith' track, which'll be on their record that's due to be released within the year. I know 'Black Skies' is due to be returning to the studio soon...not sure when, but I'm pretty excited about it. 'Kowloon Walled City' is currently recording their first full album, no big details yet.

Also, even though we're not going to be on the air over the summer, we still want to hear your band (especially if you fit our format. take a good guess.) Keep in mind that we love and favor DIY artists. We're also interested in potentially doing some interviews on the air in the future...you know, let us know.

...I'm going to work on changing the site again after school's over--we're obviously behind the times by a couple weeks now, and I fucking hate the color palette now. It looks like barf. I might also try to make the page less 'noisy'. If you have any suggestions, I'm way open to them.

and lastly, I wanted to plug two things: tomorrow will be the last airing of 'Philosophical Discourses' on WMUC2, Eldis and I may come back to do the show next semester...who knows. Also, I'll be sitting during 'Dna in the Dna' tomorrow from 6pm-8pm for Sean's two hour NIRVANA special--this'll be the last radio show I do for a couple months.

Anywho, it'll be dead around here for a week or two as we buckle down here in College Park, keep the faith though.

--fred

DNA Test Fest II (2009) in DC

Another year has come which means another DNA Test Fest, organized by Sean Gray from WMUC's 'DNA in the DNA', the longest running and most belligerent, vile, and offensive punk show on college radio on the East Coast.



It's $15 dollars for two days of obscene noise-violence at the Velvet Lounge (down the street from DC Metro's U-Street Stop on the Green Line)

April 24th-25th
7pm 'til Death

COME ONNNNN!!!

--fred

I Met a Cool Band on the Internet Today (Carusella)

This is Carusella from Israel:


more to come soon...
--fred

Articles on Squashed Foreign Efforts to Stop (Internet) Piracy

New Zealand:
http://chattahbox.com/business/2009/03/24/new-zealand-backs-down-from-controversial-“three-strikes”-copyright-law/

*New* France:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7992262.stm

Hooray (for now)

--fred

(music posts coming later today)

More Boring Radio Shit

We're going to post some music soon, we promise.

So, Trey and I guest DJed at WMBC sometime last week with Hasan from Death By Hanger (deathbyhanger.blogspot.com, and a good time was had by all. You can check the recording of it on his blog (right panel).

Also, worth nothing, if the very special airing of MINDGRINDER tonight, dubbed GRUNGE-GRINDER, or something of the like. I'll be playing some Amphetamine Reptile-era Noise Rock, Seattle Grunge (before and after the boom), and a few other 90s nostalgia indie bands (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Treepeople). It'll be a good time...

--fred

MINDGRINDER - Projecting an Image of Success!

So things were all sunny and right in the world of MINDGRINDER last week...til we actually got the station Tuesday night. Oblivious to our knowledge, until right before we went on, the "Auxiliary" cable, which allows us to use our fancy (and busted ass) iPods during our show was out of commission, or in better description, was only playing sound through the left channel. Our immediate plan was, of course, to follow through with the show anyway and just dub it 'MONOGRINDER' to give it some sort of legitimacy (and novelty, albeit a very small one). However, when coupled with a couple friends who either just happened to be at the station, or came by to sit in for the show, an entirely different type of show was spawned.

2 Hours of Eldis (Pussyhawk Live) talking about his cardigan, Pope John Paul II, GG Allin, and an excellent bout of improv from a kind sport in CR2 (WMUC2 internet stream), mixed with interludes from a ton of 80s bands I've never heard of/never want to hear again. Needless to say, we had fun, but judging from our list of online listeners (which was consistently zero, apart from the 'stream-ripper'), I'm guessing we didn't really appeal to our listeners all that much with our showing.

ANYWAYYY, I'm writing all of this bullshit just to say that the problem with our soundboard has been...treated, and we should be able to move ahead as planned tomorrow night, and play the music we intended to play last week before the station decided to be a piece of shit and break. LISTEN, for fucks sake--us being on the air is pointless if we don't have anyone tuning in:

Tuesdays 10pm-12am (eastern time)
streaming over the internet at wmucradio.com
stream link: http://wmucradio.com/wmuc-high.m3u

Preview of things to come: NOOTHGRUSH, Grief, dISEMBOWELMENT, Dystopia, Grey, PENTAGRAM....

--fred

A MINDJUICING

Being out of school has been interesting, and I've probably been about as productive as I was during our summer break. It's just been a lot sitting around til 4 at the night listening to the same 4 or 5 bands and going out to see shows every now and then. I've collected a good amount of Jap. Grindcore that I've yet to sort through...

I keep running into this wall of shitty awful music that I can't sidestep or navigate around. One of those bands is Waiting For Decay, which was recently uploaded to Sludge Swamp--here's my own upload of the album:

Waiting For Decay - Arena For The Unwell


I apologize now for my inability to put this eloquently...but this album fucking sucks. It's really really terrible. It sounds like Metallica if they stopped tossing riff salad, went back to their Load/ReLoad/Black Album era, and recorded an entire album of "hard" acoustic songs. It's all here--the alternative cliche "emotion-drenched" singing, the awful heart felt lyrics about how BROKEN he is, the loud-quiet dynamic, the chain wallets. It's something this guy would listen to:

Fuck that guy. Don't download it.

Anything relatively decent that I've run across has been stuff that Hasan from Death By Hanger pointed me towards, like:

Hotbild - Vemod
(Blackened Crustcore, Crusty Black Metal, or something...)

Rotten Sound - Cycles
(grind)

There's also this band out found out of my own volition:

El Buzzard - Tranquilizante Del Elefante
("screamo" is what a lot of people are calling this, sounds more like KARP worship to me)

The group broke up sometime around 2007 and uploaded their entire catalog onto their site for free download. If you like what you hear, check it out.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Shows attended throughout the break:
News Years Eve: Magrudergrind w/ Poison Planet, Coke Bust, Born Bad @ the Corpse Fortress
1/2/09 Surroundings w/ Mammoth Grinder, Triac, DEATHAMMER, and Ramming Speed (and some band with Bird in title...) @ the Corpse Fortress
1/3/09 NOCNITSA w/ some big goateed gentleman with a bass guitar that kept a man who played the bongos with him, and a Disc Jockey that played Harsh Black Ambient @ the Talking Head Club
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vague Events:


We're due to be back on the air the week of the first day of classes, which is the 25th or so. Still no word on our placement in the schedule...hopefully it'll be close to what we had last semester.

--fred

Merry Christmas, from your friends at MINDGRINDER!

Finals! (fuck!)

As you've probably noticed...we've fallen behind in terms of posts--but hey we've got our reasons. I for one, am still rebuilding my collection from when my drive failed, and Trey totally fried his laptop. Expect some updates once winter break starts (after this weekend).

Cannibal Corpse!


PS - Make sure you check out MINDGRINDER this week (schedule on right sidebar). This will be our last show of the semester, so we'll be playing our favorite tracks from the last few months. After that we'll be going on hiatus and be back late Jan/early Feb.

--fred

Also...mindgrinder this week...

Trey's going to be gone for the week--so I'm going to break format...sort of. I will be playing all local and underground bands...so IF YOU SENT ME YOUR BANDS STUFF IN THE MAIL, chances are it will be played on the air.

10/28/08
TUESDAY. 10pm-12am, eastern.
wmucradio.com

A Few (hundred) Words.

The music community on blogger is a vibrant, beautiful, dynamic creature that rose from the ingenuity of a few souls with a fresh idea and eventually multiplied into hundreds of networks connecting millions of fans across the planet. These blogs offer a great medium of communication between fans, where they can share bands and even educate others on different and new subgenres of music. However, if you were to tell me that the blog community we have now is to last past next February, I wouldn’t believe you. Thousands of these sites exist on blogger; ranging from overt-pirate sites, who post disclaimers solely to cover their legal trail, or sites who offer one or two songs and a short bio of the band in question. Both of these sites are at risk of prosecution by the RIAA.

Take a look at the whole P2P scandal from the past few years that’s remarkably still on-going. P2P enables users to download individual files from other people, through a network that connects users directly. Not only can someone copy a file from someone else, but they can speed up that process by copying that single file from multiple users at a time. Back in 2000, mainstream artists, such as Metallica (of course), caught on and attempted multiple lawsuits on individuals for downloading single songs. This led to the death of one of the first popular P2P apps, Napster, which was quickly replaced by other apps, such as Kazaa, Morpheus, and Bearshare. What separates us from these P2P networks is the magnitude of music being “shared”. Rather than us putting up popular songs or A-Sides off of albums, we’re upping entire albums—discographies even. The RIAA were certainly capable of shutting down the larger torrent sites that offered a similar service—they even shut down the supremely productive sites like OiNK, which, through its ratio requirements, inherently motivated its members to upload hard to find and obscure music. They don’t care whether the music you’re uploading is out of print or impossible to buy, if they have a sliver of a case, they will act on it. They’ve even gone as far as suing a dead man’s relatives to collect on file-sharing violations.

If the RIAA is wiling to do something as ruthless as suing a grieving family because of the copyrighted files their deceased family member downloaded, they’re surely poised to shut our community down. When they do…I can only hope they hold the people who run the individual blogs are held accountable rather than Blogger--who have been incredibly hospitable in allowing us to do what we do. Chances are, though, that since the RIAA targeted the creators of the P2P apps, which weren’t specifically designed for the sharing of copyrighted material, they’ll surely attack the Blogger team first (who thankfully are backed by Google’s muscle.)

One thing I’ve had a hard time defining is whether or not the things we’re doing here are right or not. For one, we’re getting bands broken. Bands who would usually drown or fade away in obscurity are instead being raved about; for instance Parasytic, from Richmond, Virginia, and Grey, from Olympia, Washington. They owe A LOT to blogs, whether they’re aware of them or willing to admit it. Other bands have even encouraged the upping of their albums—some even doing it themselves, such as Jaked Off Shorts and Loaded Heads and Kowloon Walled City. These are bands that realize the potential of blogs and internet downloads and use it to their advantage…not to gain revenue—but solely for the purpose of GETTING HEARD.

Few labels have asked us to take down their albums, and only one or two bands have complained. I assume that the labels we’re in correspondence with are well aware of our blog and don’t have any problems with what we’re doing, they may even encourage us promoting their bands. Businesses have contacted us to try to use our site as an advertising base—saying we cater to the demographic they’re trying to capture. They see some sort of value in blogging, even if our form is an overtly illegal operation. The point is that people aren’t not trying to be associated with us. I don’t think they take into consideration MINDGRINDER’s aesthetic or quality of content, but rather, they just accept the inherent value of blogs in general.

We all know for sure that bands and “artists” like Metallica and Madonna don’t agree with what we do, but what about the Underground acts? Does posting music with a contrasting level of popularity save us any grief?

Take Lo-Res’ blog for an example. Lo-Res primarily uploads out-of-print records and obscure grindcore, powerviolence, metal, and hardcore bands, and usually supplies a pretty introspective bio of the band; reciting seeing the band in their prime or personal experiences with the members. You feel as if you actually gain something from reading his blog—he is, in a way, sitting you down and sharing his favorite albums with you in a very intimate fashion, and thus, I feel like there’s some sort of legitimacy in his blog.

However, there are a few blogs that completely contrast his method of running a site, such as lucid. Lucidmedia is the type of blog that posts music spanning across all different genres of music; and they’re primarily concerned with posting as much as possible. There was a time where I greatly admired the site, and even downloaded albums from genres that I KNEW I didn’t like, just because I trusted their contributors so much. But as the monster grew, lucid began hiring more contributors to strengthen the volume of weekly posts, and with that growth, went the quality of the posts. Biographies or descriptions of the artists ceased, replaced by album images and links to megaupload files or mediafire uploads. Blogs like Lucidmedia are not productive—and they’re the type of site that will lead the eventual shutdown of Blogger’s music community.

I sort of consider MINDGRINDER as being a midpoint between the two, and we try to serve the same purpose that we originally intended in getting our radio show; that is, exposing our audience to new bands and forms of music. Although we were originally designed around a Lucid Type layout, as that was the blog I was most familiar with at the time, we’ve made an effort to grow beyond that layout and become a stronger blog (although some vestiges of this former layout remain). We post, albeit not that often, tours dates for some of the bands we upload, links to bands myspaces, and even links to record labels that we prefer. This doesn’t make what we’re doing right, but I think it helps our integrity a bit. It’s unfortunate, though, that this will come to end someday. Eventually we’ll graduate or leave college and lose our show, and eventually the RIAA will crack down on and shut down all of your favorite pages, and we’ll be unable to continue things we love doing. I fear of what we’ll do afterwards, not only for obtaining music, but finding new music.

Don’t take what we have on blogger for granted, we’re really really lucky to have this community. If you illegally download music excessively--at the very least support the artists you like in one way or another, through going to a show, or buying a 7”…just put forth a (couple) few dollars to give our existence a little more meaning.

--fred

Vacation Grinder

On our show next Tuesday...we're playing nothing but Metal: Speed-Death-Thrash-Black-Gore for two solid hours (10pm-12am). As always, we'll be streaming the show live from the blog when we go on.

Slayer - Show No Mercy/Haunting the Chapel

--fred

PS: Check us on myspace if you haven't already