Beautiful Necks
* Nate Denver’s Neck: Cough (3.5 mb) | Snuggle Tummy (3.0 mb) | Watching The Wheels (3.0 mb)
From Live : Rock Is Hell Records : RIH-004
Sometimes I just hate the fact that there are so many cool record stores and mail order outlets. I know, I know, it’s a hard cross to bear. But places like Reckless Records, Hard Boiled Records, Permanent Records, Archive, Mimaroglu Music, Fusetron Sound, Forced Exposure and Aquarius Records just suck up all my money. I mean, if they didn’t exist, I’d probably be able to save money instead of being up to my ears in debt.
But then I’d never be able to hear about awesome, incredible bands like this one, Nate Denver’s Neck. From the first time I read about this band, I knew that I’d have to get something of theirs.
For those of you unfamiliar with Nate Denver, imagine, every band you liked in high school, every comic book you have ever read, every fantasy movie you’ve ever seen featuring either dragons or wizards or both, some skateboards, a lot of heavy metal, death metal to be specific, some beautiful folk songs, spikes, elves, banjos, Nintendos and anything else you remember fondly on your convoluted path to where you are NOW, all chopped up and blended into an impossibly catchy, goofy, funny, pretty, heavy, folk metal ultraviolent goofball spazz rock mess. Denver is insanely adept at squashing all manner of unlikely sounds into a single performance, or even a single song, and make it sound perfect. Pretty songs are only pretty on the surface, but are actually subtly violent and evil and hateful and miserable, howling chaotic blasts of pummeling noise are somehow happy and joyful, filled with flowers and clouds and sunshine. Which goes a long way to explaining the charm of Nate Denver’s Neck. This world where metal and folk, dragons and elves co-exist peacefully, is fun and funny, ironic but not intentionally, wild and ridiculous, but ultimately, heartfelt and insanely well crafted. Schizophrenic for sure, but in a gloriously satisfyingly demented sort of way! (Aquarius Records)
I was also intrigued by the way he chose to release the album. I mean, the 3 inch CD has its place, but a 3×3″ CDR is just kind of ridiculous, as you have to do triple the amount of work to put it out. For those who don’t know, a 3″ CD contains 20 minutes of music. So, three of them would have 60 minutes of music, which would very easily fit on one 5″ CDR. I guess that’s just a long, round about way of saying, what the hell?!?! Why would you sit and burn three CDs when you can just burn one?
At any rate, Nate Denver is pretty damn amazing and his amalgamation of folk, death metal, hip hop and pretty much everything else you can think of is an aural delight.
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