Alternative Three - August

Scientists have determined that the Earth’s surface will not be able to support human life much longer, due to pollution and overpopulation. In 1957, Dr Carl Garstein proposed three alternative solutions. The first was a drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second, the construction of vast underground shelters. Alternative three?

Once again this is being typed in a twenty four hour café in a late-night teeth grinding caffeine frenzy because I have spectacularly failed to prepare again. It seems I can’t grasp the notion of a monthly column because I always look at my phone and realise how late in the month it is (this column is supposed to go out on the last Monday of each month, barring my laziness, my editor’s whims, and cosmic coincidence) and realise I need to serpently seek out at least three underrated underground wonders within a few hours of the deadline because I’ve spent yet another month listening to nothing but Atomic Rooster and Black Sabbath b-sides. That and I’m working hugely at the moment (but doing a lot of driving, so more time to listen to music) and trying my best to live in the early days of a better nation, so that might explain the general tardiness and slovenliness of this column.

There’s a new Bongripper isn't there? Yes. Miserable WAS available for free if you were dishonest, though that offer may have ended by the time this sentence slithers through the internet and up your face pipes. Miserable is another forty minutes of Chicago doom, as always, thuddingly heavy in the way Wagner and Sabbath and Sleep only glimpsed. Like all Bongripper records, I won’t be able to give an honest assessment until I’ve lived with it for a few months, been through a winter with it, and quite possibly used it as a decongestant when the annual flu spell leaves me with aching limbs and sinuses full of concrete and a desire to listen to something that will melt my feeble plastic brain. After only a dozen or so listens this new record sounds great though.

We’ve covered plenty of blackened thrash metal here, so why not have some more, the free debut by Nolti Nan Gana Nan Nolta is not only a mouthful but a great slice of underground metal. If that doesn’t sharpen your battleaxe, try Tar Hag and their spectacular Ancient Vessel. While it appears to have been recorded in the next room, there’s something appealingly conventional about their rock and roll.

If you want to chill out, you need Out Through The In Door by Sun Of Man. It’s the perfect music for this time of year. As 5-Track put it, “you can see winter from here, but the days are still bright”.

Expect next month’s column to either come in a fug of newly minted Scottish raveolution comedown smoke or clipped sentences of depressed and downtrodden downer commonwealth commoner misanthropy. Maybe the Proclaimers will set the tone of the nation, although I’m not holding much hope of that eventuality. Maybe the hopeless subchuds that usually elect absolute arseholes to power (and fill the charts with crap and go and see awful films as well) will pull it out of the bag when the chips are down, my naive optimism is internally clashing with my inherent distrust of all organic beings and forming a kind of lump at the base of my skull that I should probably get medical help for.

There’ll be great music, whoever gets elected. Tweet me some that you discover.

Act now, and you too can regret following me on twitter @stevendinnie