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sludgeon.com/favsongs
[What is this page?]Favorite Studio Recordings
Muslimgauze - Gulf Between Us (1997); Bryn Jones is an incredible influence upon me in 2025 - I feel a parasocial bond with him, having been a bit of an odd fellow and myself a differently manifesting one (certainly less successful in my expression). The era during which he churned out these sonic tapestries was not nearly as individual-friendly or democratized as it is today, for better or worse. Bryn was an example of a phenom - a force that comes about rarely, and accomplished in what really is a short time a lifetime's body of work. Mysterious but also universal, the englishman created powerful music that achieved its purpose in spades; I believe his work is more pertinent and consumed than at any prior point. It has succeeded in provoking critical thought in the minds of the insulated; I could and likely would have gone my whole life without concerning myself much with the struggles in Gaza - the media's narratives and their counters would've most likely rolled past my hole(s) and that would be a shame. The conflicts which motivated him to create such individually serene and ornate art in sonics are persisting and can and may inspire another ripe young mind. To comment on the song, the low end-rich tones that cascade in a descending constellatory shape repeatedly are quite therapeutic - they aren't reproduceable by phone speakers which makes this therapy untappable while I languish at work, but they do work their magic on my leisure-period that still reels from the assaults of months past, and anticipates only negatives in this bizarre world of idiots, ungratefulness and barbarism, which are 'values' (in the mathematical respect) within Muslimgauze's span. The absence of central vocals (check out their 1986 liveshow audio to hear an incarnation which did incorporate this) majorly widens the aspect ratio of the music's imagery; with a finite voice, one is boxed into the relatability and attributes of the vocalist; without such constraints, and the freedom to introduce and remove speech from any source, you are in possession of ample potential energy. The musician becomes a chameleon in front of a slideshow of troubling sights and situations.
Bourbonese Qualk - No Easy Answer (1991); A neat little English avant garde project which existed in the same conversation as Muslimgauze in the early to mid 1980s, I quite appreciate about them their tasteful aesthetics, visual and auditory. The juxtaposition of light but sterile analog synthesis and screamed, effected vocals and loungy instrumentation is cultured, and something which hasn't been expanded upon. There are some molds of sound that get encased in amber and never revisited, due to the integrality of whatever aging or deprocated production processes or something similar. This song's recurring chord every 'one' beat is reminiscent (or vice versa rather) of Muslimgauze's 'Hebron Massacre', which too exhibits this pattern of unsettlingly recurrent chordal stabs.
Curve - Think And Act (1992);
Swans - A Long Slow Screw (1986); Swans is a band that is perhaps near the end of my own lineation of musical revelations to date; having acquainted myself with their music (importantly separate from familiarity with their name/influence) in late 2023, I'm less than two years ddown its pipe of ingrainment. A Long Slow Screw is them at their most menacing, right next to Real Love; no Jarboe in there to brighten anything, to add cherry flavoring - Gira's grunts and howls of discontent, the same discontent that sits in my heart and mind. His lyrics and deliveries sound like what you could imagine yourself to reproduce after an exhausting day of manual labor and spirit imbibement - and at 22, I'm experiencing a concentration of part-demoralizing, part-motivating forces. Gira's voice is the same as that of my slipping psyche.
June 2025;Muslimgauze - Mount Of Olives (1995); Muslimgauze at its height of hypnotic potency; I don't condone listening while operating a motor vehicle.
Rammstein - Sonne (2001)
Skrew - Sea Man (1997)
Brutal Truth - Collapse (1994); Brutal Truth, a band I was once quite the proponent of, re-entered my musical dietary valence only just recently - though I can't remember what made me dust off the ol' YouTube search for Godplayer, I evidently did, and decided that I wanted to delve a little deeper into the album which created a little distance, or headroom, between the onslaughts of frenzied blastbeats. At one time, I would have copped a dismissive attitude opposite the position I assume today, which celebrates dynamics, aesthetics and groove, but it likely comes down to musical inexperience and palate neonatality I would've been experiencing at the time. Be it on maturity or simple and inexplicable diversion, I didn't listen to Brutal Truth for years and fell out of love largely with the punken fastcore ethos that much of grind founds itself upon, until I found myself thinking about Gurn and the explanation Kevin Sharp gave about his ousting from the collective (he hadn't practiced or played guitar since the band's initial dissolution and was no longer up to specification in their eyes) and I entertained the potentials for congruence with myself and not practicing guitar for long periods. And with nostalgia's revolutions striking more often now and for the period of time during which I listened to grindcore and memphis trap (triple six mafia underground 1), there are bound to be more revisitations of albums and discoveries of tunes I either didn't fully appreciate or missed entirely.
Curve - Horror Head (1992)
May 2025;Sepultura - Orgasmatron (Motorhead cover) (1991)
Front 242 - Soul Manager (1991) ; Having been a fan of industrious music, whether leaning into conventional rock/metal structures or totally German-style Tubeway Army-descendent electronics collectives since 2018, I really can't pass up anything that has loops, characteristically cold '80s sounding Analog/Digital conversion, or slash especially and steely synthetic percussive elements. Samplers as a tool have burrowed their way deep into my identity and sensabilities musically, for better or worse. Anyway, Front 242 is a band that took me a little more time than their labelmates to so much as take a seminal gander at, and a few more years to actually hearken back to a memory of the CD and alas fall in love with their sound. 'Tyranny For You' sounded nothing like I thought it would when I first bought the CD at Doc's Records in 2018; in fact, as a key reminder of my capacity for incompetence, I thought for a time that I had been bamboozled in some way as I suspected baselessly that the enclosed compact disk was a mismatch, as happens or is noticed at least on occasion at record stores or garage sales (certainly quite a common phenomenon for orphaned yard sale CD collections). On the disk is printed 'Tyranny >For You<' and perhaps an absent band name on the disk (not that it should be mandated that CDs have some representation of all the information sourceable from the jewel case inserts) is what informed my idiotic belief that maybe there had been some mistake, and the disk I had was for some begotten other band called Tyranny or something. Embarrassing confession now unretractable, I evidently came to my senses at some point (I think it took three more years; I distinctly remember resorting to inserting the still mysterious disk into my car's CD player in the dark in Justin, TX somewhere and enduring the first two songs Sacrifice and Rhythm Of Time while my buddy Trey finished up business inside whoever's house I was in the driveway of) and realized that I had the real thing, and that I didn't actually dislike what I was hearing. Winding the clock back to what motivated me to buy the CD to begin with, I recognized the band name from being associated with Ministry; I became a rivethead in 2018 after a conversation with my theater teacher about his experience at a Ministry concert, an anecdote that also acquainted me with Revolting Cocks "RevCo". I bought the CD as there was a real drought of exciting shit within those racks (I regret not buying Skrew's Angel Seed) after my high school friend Corbin and I had extracted from them anything and everything potent over the course of a summer. Around the same time, likely just prior to the bimonthly weekend music shopping expedition downtown, I was in the car with my then-girlfriend and her mom, who probably asked me what kind of music I dug. Responding with a short list including Ministry, we encircled them topically and I asked her if she knew about Revolting Cocks, which, to my surprise, she did and followed up with her own query about my familiarity with Front 242. Bluffing, I said I did know who they were and that I liked them - oh the dishonesty! So I bought the CD and played a minute of it and put it back in the jewel case for 3 years. What a crazy straw of a journey of acquaintance, acquisition and arrested re-exposure. Rekindling my industrial affinities gradually over time following the death metal/ grindcore ballooning and poppage, I got Rhythm Of Time stuck in my head from the memory of the Justin, TX vehicular wait session sometime in March this year. Pulling the album and song up, listening a number of times, and latching onto newfound favorites (Leitmotiv 136, Soul Manager) saw the album's tracks make entry into my recommended YouTube replays, and alas, Soul Manager's somewhat funky gait ends up here. It's lyrics are rehearsed semi-regularly in my mind and whistleblew skepticisms about an oft-journal mentioned figure's goodwill "I'm the trusting friend you need - You're the open book I read"; a learning experience in being gaurded about personal communications and displays of authenticity or compromised angles (my ass crack) to hunchback bald type 4 stomach cancer sufferers.
March 2025;Metallica - I Disappear (2000); Being one of the songs that got me into metal to begin with, Metallica's infamous Napster song
Muslimgauze - Sari Of Acidic Colors (1996)
February 2025;Muslimgauze - Missing Tibetans (1994); The departure between the Emak Bakia album and the rest of Bryn Jones' discography is so curious and quickly extinguished that it commands a bit of intrigue. 'Missing Tibetans' is the second song I heard from that mysterious and aesthetically delicious CD, and it inspired a bizarre call to arms that would leave the likes of Pete Cannon scratching their heads. The high pitched female vocal on the track amplified an (until then) ambient desire to explore the Amiga realm; trackers were among the first of the observed articles of hardware sustenance in DAWless jamming for me; the PolyEnd tracker was something that I gawked at during a time of PC workflow enslavement. The aforementioned vocal loop and perhaps its underlying track too hinted at the house music sonic template, and at this I said "fuck it" and bought an Amiga A500 without the slightest inkling that Bryn had actually used one (because who the fuck knows what he actually used, except for a Roland R8 and DAT recorder). I've thrown myself at collecting in the interest of maximizing potentials/attainable sounds, but another reason for the eager charging into the payment stages of online gear listings is to familiarize myself with what is offered now, what was offered and what has no guarantee of being offered in future. Conversations with Daelen about the launch of the iPhone eighteen years ago and the product's reciprocally felt ill effects on consumer tech afterwards and compounded today mull the grapes for this glass of wine, represented by coherent, consistent expression of ideas. It is easy to find yourself in a position of scrutiny without teeth or claws to secure your fading claim to uprightness, when you lost/forgot to resharpen them after the last fight. Dissecting the concessions we, the consumer, have made to corporations that anally precipitate brown pallaver into our outstretched palms zooms out the camera and makes it possible to draw marks of correlation from production workflows pre and post iPhone launch and greater culture before and after.
Muslimgauze - Remix of Thugghee (actually Return Of Black September) (1996); This track is a
Early 2025;Mortician - Defiler Of The Dead (1995)
December 2024;Muslimgauze - Blood Of Salah Jadallah (1995);
October 2024;Muslimgauze - Bilechik Mule (1999); I am still, in June 2025, under the spell of this song.
September 2024;Muslimgauze - Mullah Said (1998); What I enjoy particularly about this song is the atmosphere it weaves - the steely plucks of whatever instrument repeating and glaring like a reflective sabre inspires in me something resembling latent awakening to surroundings. Think Dido's 'Thank You'; the music video and delicious melancholic beat compliment eachother in that they paint a picture of expiration, of sighing with the turning of the proverbial page. Well Mullah Said is the opposite but with similar aesthetic - the repetitiveness and urgent kind of vibration is akin to being a windowseated passenger on the bus of life; desiring a change but not getting it. Like the 40 seconds after stopping when pulled over by a policeman, the soundless light bars splashing cascading red and blue on the waiting you and the sleeping inhabitant's house wall siding.
July 2024;Muslimgauze - Mint Tea With Gaddafi (1999); around the time my former boss Paul retired, I began getting into Muslimgauze, and a notable moment relating to this song was the drive home from the dinner Paul, Paul's brother, Paul's wife, Lyn, Lyn's wife, and myself enjoyed at Demassi's mediterranean buffet.
Pitchshifter - Floppy Disc (1997)
July 2024;Scarab - Scent Of Arura (1996); My introduction to ethnic electronica - this weird, minimal abstract project and enchanting song. Finding out about Scarab through Equations Of Eternity's captivating publishing mark (WordSound) is truly a testament to Napalm Death's paper fortune teller-esque lineup and alumni that fortunately hasn't experienced many deaths relative to their cohorts (obviously with the exception of Jesse Pintado, R.I.P.); they have everything to do with my discovery of the inspirational Scarab. To make a relatively labyrinthical story quite short, Mick Harris can be credited for delivering Napalm Death to the world through what appearences would indicate as very effective interpersonal networking and diplomatic dedication as far as work ethic and band politics are concerned. After his motivation exhausted sometime in 1991, he went on to do some truly groundbreaking things with early N.D. bandmate and personal friend Nicholas Bullen in Scorn
July 2024;Bolt Thrower - The IVth Crusade (1992); Around the time I was becoming a member of Tachycardia, I had been practicing drums semi-seriously for a month or two. 'The IVth Crusade' has a relatively simple drum line and was inspiring to hear Andy Whale doing what was to me some pretty impressive double bass and fills. The guitar riff is addictive, and the video component (despite the band having remarked in an interview their displeasedness with the result) revitalized passion about video mixing and music video exploration/craft honing.
June 2024;Pitch Shifter - Landfill (1991); When Jerel and I were onlookers to the cognitive dissonance of our bandleader sabotaging group labors spanning weeks during the last days of Withered Fabrication, I had been cemented into a major HR-16-deitifying Godflesh and Pitchshifter kick (period of repeat listening). One of the two of us proposed doing a project together, and having been making serious headway to getting the Atari 1040STF system working, I opted to utilize this method of sequence administration. The initial incarnation of 'Pitch Shifter', very faithful in their worship of Godflesh's template, was a chief influence upon my movements with Cremated (Jerel and I's tentative gestation) and even, somewhat regrettably, Resin Huffer ('Mines' prototypal demo).
Godflesh - Christbait Rising (1989)
Rob Zombie - What Lurks On Channel X? (1998)
Cable Regime - Novocaine Kul (1992);
November 2023;Godflesh - Slavestate (1991); Between the profoundly trippy visuals featured on the Howard Garfield-directed music video and the synthesizer excerpt-showcase loop that almost stains the track in something of a Temple OS-aesthetic, Slavestate's title track is a document of what industrial metal is. The visuals of the video compliment the song so well in my view, earning Howard Garfield a bit of a worshipped status as far as single-credit facelesses go for me. I see the chromatic cycling as just a ridiculously cool effect that I wish to get in on the action of.
Mid 2023;White Zombie - Electric Head Pt. 1 (The Agony) (1995)
Early 2023;Lead Into Gold - Sweet Thirteen (1990); A big pressure
Early 2023;Fear Factory - Digimortal (2001)
Early 2022;DJ Zirk - Shit Popz Off (1996); Aye, there was a time when I desired nothing more than to be a rap superstar, live large, have a big house, in its' driveway five cars, etcetera etcetera. But as is thematic in my life, my playout of this aspiration is a bit neurodivergent. I became smitten with Memphis trap music at the start of 2021 - I watched Cody Davidson of Sanguisugabogg's studio recording progress video that did a better job of exhibiting his presumed playlist heavyweights on account of their prominence in the video, these pieces being Project Pat's 'Out There' and Tommy Wright III's 'Meet Yo Maker'. At the time, my conception of rap music (discounting ICP) was Public Enemy vs. Anthrax and some distant memory of listening to N.W.A. on the schoolbus in sophomore year; I ended that day with a massive interest in the genre. From a random and to all else insignificant feed node. I developed a fanhood of Patrick Houston, taking up listening to his 1999 album 'Ghetty Green' concurrently to my girlfriend and I's shared Cocteau Twins' spell and surely my massive Napalm Death and budding pornogrind fascination. From Pat I singled out Triple Six Mafia tracks he was on, and thusly listened to a bit of the Underground Part 1 and 2 albums from 1999. Koopsta Knicca
September 2021;Ministry - Corrosion (1992); On one occasion, in the earlier Croc days when Trey was still holed up in Bedford in the apartment complex near a playground and with a patio to observe the sizable nearby water tower, there was a morning after which I had evidently spent the night and a high school friend of Trey's needed a ride back to his private domicile in Granbury. Consenting to the suggestion-command issued by Trey, the stranger friend and I made headway to my town and further, and for the journey I put on Ministry's 'Psalm 69' album. I had it on relatively low volume because I was unsure of the passenger's music tastes but as we approached the destination and the easygoing guy assured me I could turn it up, the album's backloaded track 'Corrosion' came on and for the first time I presume, I paid attention to the song. I was enamored with the simple mechanical brutality. It was great to find something I'd missed previously in my impromptu revisiting of the album I had really only consumed in fragments (Scarecrow, the title track Psalm 69, Jesus Built My Hotrod, Grace (I probably thought it was a '..Mind..' track before) and Just One Fix and N.W.O. of course) before then, not having appreciated the full presentation/tracklist. I'd identify this event as being a catalyst for the gradually steepening affinities for rustic, 'corrosive' sonic treatments in the contemporary Crocodylinae project - I'm recalling the distorted and sidechained kick drum track and the 'sputtering' engine-like effect I achieved probably due in no small part to this new age industrial enlightenment.
April 2021;Koopsta Knicca - Stash Spot (1994); A particularly unsavory memory affixed to a time and place in my life is the one of losing all my friends after a ruinous house party (at my house and not my idea), receiving news of my grandmother's death and encountering the first wave of real turbulences with my then-girlfriend, all coinciding. I was just beginning my musical relationship with Cameron, and had the first rack occupied with a 3U EQ, Digitech Vocal 300, Line 6 POD Pro, and freshly acquired (earnest thanks to Cameron) Behringer Eurorack 3U mixer. I'm running through the components as this creeper-sat hunk of a rack was situated under a folding table atop which was a Behringer Xenyx UB802 mixer, my HP laptop and Focusrite Scarlet 2i2 interface feeding the JBL studio monitors on the 1970s-fashioned TV platform stud corner. After my friends and their friends alike filed out in teams, I laid inebriated on the Goodwill-obtained reclining couch and listened to Koopsta Knicca's Da Devils Playground through the setup, majorly bummed out about the night's unravelling. And when it came time for my grandmother's funeral nearly a week later, I made handy a pair of earbuds and listened to Project Pat and Koopsta Knicca in my funeral attire on the car ride to the service.
Mid 2020;Cathedral - Soul Sacrifice (1992); For a good while at the start of the pandemic and through the harbinger year, I did hardly anything but practice guitar dilligently and experiment with recording in the laundry room, mic'd cabinet at the wall. This tune was a true wristbreaker, but quite satisfying to run through each time - the riffing oozes this imperialism, the same vibration encapsulated in the band's album cover selections that a brainrotted person such as me can only interpret as Shrek-like.
Early 2020;Nasum - Resistance (2000); The fuzzed-out distortion and mean riff on this 'Human 2.0' track were very appealing to me around the time I moved from the house and into the Western Hills-adjacent apartment in 2019. Walking from locale to locale to play guitar in the laundry room, listening to Nasum and Rompeprop and Napalm Death's 'Mentally Murdered'... having a girlfriend... it was a good time period.
February 2019;Morbid Angel - Caesar's Palace (1995); Upon getting into death metal via a Mick Thomson (Slipknot) interview, whittling outlines for tastes out of what I heard and really liked (e.g. Malevolent Creation) and didn't much care for (e.g. Death / Possessed), I was able to formulate a quantification of what elements I enjoyed within extreme metal music. Morbid Angel was among the first bands that I gambled on outside the reservation of what was mentioned by Mick or had tempted me aesthetically (Napalm Death, even before I discovered for myself the Godflesh affiliation); Morbid Angel's logo is classically 'death metal' in its satanic overture with the red (the most common iteration is red) "horny" flanges - combined with the member's stylings, they never appealed to me prior to the death metal interest dam breaking and them regularly appearing in recommended videos amongst Cannibal Corpse or Gorguts. Even still, their imagery isn't inspiring (though I did for a time aspire to emulate David Vincent), and I don't like their earlier output e.g. 'Altars Of Madness', 'Blessed Are The Sick', even most of 'Covenant'. 'Domination' changed this satisfactory confliction (certainly owing to the change in personnel) as they slowed down quite a bit, indulging less in rapid fire and low impact thrash-esque sections and having more duty to explore grooves. Caesar's Palace features a really neat melodic guitar intro, with industrial-adjacent electronics supporting, but the real substance comes with the songwriting and deliveries on the instrumental AND vocal fronts. Yeah, all of them. Sure, the production isn't radical (never was with Morbid Angel in my view), but the vocal approach was distinctly powerful for the time I heard it first. I remember having a mental rendering of Morbid Angel's before I saw what they looked like with a Phil Anselmo-looking vocal silhouette, but as we know that voice is emanating from behind a Hamer Scarab bass.
November 2018;Slipknot - Gematria (2008); There's a selfie I took of myself atop a shipping container sometime in 2018; this is before any chin hair came in, but I do have a thin mustache and a squinty Native American expression on my face. I was wearing a little mass-produced tribal necklace thing with an anchor signet and an oversized Harley Davidson t-shirt; I remember the typical day around the time of this was to play guitar for hours in the laundry room, retire to the living room/main partition of the house to eat puffcorn and dick around in my room, and repeat the process a time or two more before going to sleep for school the next day. Gematria is the song that I
October 2018;KMFDM - Blood (Evil Mix) (1993);
September 2018;KMFDM - Juke Joint Jezebel (1995);
June 2018;Fear Factory - Self Bias Resistor (1995);
May 2018;Prong - Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck (1994);
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