Tag: featured

TAKE THIS: Win Two Tickets to DEATH PROOF INC’s Cell in a Hell at 1720

It’s our first giveaway since the pandemic began and we are going to get things right back into full swing like nothing ever happened. The Death Proof Inc family plan to celebrate the city’s reopening at 1720 with an insane concert filled with raging trap music and bodies bouncing off the walls. YOU CAN BUY TICKETS HERE OR: ENTER TO WIN 2 TICKETS TO CELL IN A HELL JUNE 24TH AT 1720 Step 1- Join Our Newsletter (look for pop up every time you arrive at jankysmooth.com) Step 2 – Tag a Friend in the comment section of our INSTAGRAM or FACEBOOK CELL IN A HELL Ticket Giveaway Post WINNER WILL BE SELECTED ON JUNE 21ST AT 11AM PST VIA EMAIL CONFIRMATION

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1349

The Road to Psycho Las Vegas

Later this month, I’ll attend my first indoor concert since March 2020. People will not be wearing masks or social distancing. I’ll have dipped my toes into the cultural soup I’ve swam in the majority of my adult life, relearning all the in’s-and-out’s of concert going. Stage-dives and mosh pits have been relegated to my long term memory banks awaiting to be unearthed. Although most metalheads will be breaking their concert fasts soon (if they haven’t already), Psycho Las Vegas is the spiritual grand re-opening of the metal scene in the wild American west. As the first large festival to take place since the beginning of the pandemic, Psycho is a test much like the ones Hunter S. Thompson indulged in with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Our senses may have been perverted, inverted, dulled and destroyed by lengthy quarantines but our imaginations are in better shape than ever and if I can imagine Psycho Las Vegas being the most insane heavy metal summit of my life, then I can will it into being. related content: A High And Beautiful Wave: Psycho Las Vegas 2019 Before the world shut down, Psycho’s 2020 lineup was one of the most anticipated slates of

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Human Fluid Rot

Music Video Premiere and Interview: Human Fluid Rot’s “The Bimbo With An M-134”

“The brainchild of Robbie Brantley (one of Miami Florida’s most prominent noise scene-freaks), HUMAN FLUID ROT is utter violence through sound. His harsh noise live sets are micro catastrophes of explosive disgust and kinetic chaos. Oftentimes lasting only a few short minutes, what you won’t get in length/duration at a HUMAN FLUID ROT show, you definitely receive in ultra condensed overstimulation of the senses. Sonically just about every frequency is represented and all at once. Stabbing and poking the inside of your brain with brutal beauty and disregard. Visually/physically, you’ll witness or participate as part of the violent mob that is invited to choke, kick and beat the man as he conducts his tangled mess of a noise board. Cathartic to say the least… Check out the exclusive music video premiere for The Bimbo With An M-134 (directed by vidiumhq) below and read on to learn more. Robbie has been terrorizing noise fests and the general public for the better part of the last two decades. He’s released countless cassette tapes and cd-r releases but “A SUDDEN INFLUX” marks his first proper vinyl release to date. The album is a disgusting journey into the fucked up puddle of viscera that is HUMAN FLUID ROT. The trance you’ll fall during your listening assault is imminent. A chaotic head cheese of shredded electronic innards and unfriendly bile. A Sudden Influx [In Serendipity] is available for

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Janky Smooth Top 10 ALBUMS of 2020 Rated By Contributors

2020: the year that drove a stake in the heart of the music industry. One has to ask themselves how something so essential can be taken away from us so easily. For as long as I’ve lived, I’ve thought life without music was not worth living. Evidently, this was not true and came from a place of privilege. We’ve all had a little bit of privilege taken from us this year. Some more than others, but everyone got checked. If 2020 can teach us anything, it’s that life is worth something even in the most monstrous circumstances: being without music, without your job, your money, even your health. What is essential about music is that it helps us define ourselves as individuals. In a crisis, often times we forget who we are just trying to survive. For me, band shirts are my way of signaling my identity to the world, and if Covid or economic collapse takes everything from me, chances are I’ll still have the shirt on my back to let everyone know I listen to Slayer. Whether you’re a musician, promoter, journalist or just a fan, do not let cultural subversion or personal degradation steal your identity. We

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Die Kunstkammer

Learning Blocks: Karim Shuquem on ‘Die Kunstkammer’

Karim Shuquem is always reaching for something: sometimes a trumpet or a microphone, other times a paintbrush or a black block. Far more often, however, he’s reaching for things less tangible. The tag Shuquem painted in alleyways as a teenager still aptly describes his chronic condition: “A-N-X.” Angst. “There’s this thing that’s been bugging me about myself,” the multimedia artist and musician admits. “When examining my motives, I wonder: ‘Why do I feel the constant need to do something?’” Doing something has taken innumerable forms over his decades-long career as an artist: graffiti; zines; music; performance art; graphic art; education; and most recently, ever-evolving sculpture. In October, Shuquem completed his most recent public art installation, Die Kunstkammer. The candle-lit tower of 100 black blocks, dark images and decontextualized objects currently provokes and spellbinds curious onlookers at Glendale’s Adams Square Mini Park. “It’s a construction of matter or whatever reality is, but at the same time, it’s physically interchangeable as they change position every showing, creating sort of a relational parallel to whatever thought processes there are behind the work,” Shuquem explains. Our readers may better know Karim Shuquem by his ghoulish, Dionysian, trumpet-playing alter ego, Loto Ball, who fronts The

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Dark Art Brings Levity: Body / Negative’s Andy Schiaffino Discusses “Fragments”

In a time that seems to fray the very fabric of our social lives, Andy Schiaffino finds comfort in the hiss of a disintegrating cassette tape. Body / Negative is the transgressive solo project of the 23-year-old non-binary artist and producer, who utilizes minimal equipment, multimedia experimentation and creative camaraderie to actualize their haunting, abstract soundscapes. Drawing on their own journeys through the dark and dire, Andy delivers a primal, sensitive and serene seven-track album, Fragments, to shelter us from the storm. Audrey: Andy, thank you so much for joining me this afternoon to discuss the impending release of your solo drone project, Body / Negative’s first full-length album, Fragments, which comes out October 23rd on Track Number Records! The LP, limited to only 500 copies, looks stunning on that marble gray vinyl. Could you tell me a bit about your journey creating your most extensive work yet? Andy: Of course, thank you! It took a really long time to finish Fragments. I started it last spring, and since then, production has been very stop-and-go–losing and rediscovering motivation. I don’t like to force myself to work on music if I’m not feeling it, because I feel like that creates mush

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Music Video Premiere: Cancer Christ’s “The Blood of Jesus”

The list of horrors 2020 has brought upon the world may seem almost Biblical at times, it’s no wonder a power violence band as exhilarating and exorcizing as these true believers would arise. CANCER CHRIST is a brand new REPTILIAN-CHRIST-CORE band off of Los Angeles’ Sweatband Records and they’re here to premiere their debut song/music video, “The Blood of Jesus”. Brought to you by Anthony Mehlhaff (prolific photographer of the LA music scene), and his anonymous “Snake Boys”, CANCER CHRIST is here to fuck shit up and make America pay for it’s sins… Are they Christian? Are they ANTI-Christian? What’s their deal? The song will premiere on “SWEATBAND RECORDS presents… NEON CORPSE PARADE Volume One” compilation 12″ vinyl album (coming out this year). Hit the link to preorder it!  

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Music Video Premiere: Duke Stamina’s “Gay Pac”

Here at Janky HQ we’re always looking to shine a light on something a little different. With the tumultuous times we’re in today we think it’s a great chance to direct your attention to a marginalized voice making some wild-as-fuck, in-your-face, aggressively gay and kawaii as hell raps – all via the backwards wasteland we all call Florida. (I can only assume living there makes one want to clap back just as hard as the talking heads they pass on the street so it makes perfect sense.) Don’t just take my word for any of this though, feast your eyes on the single and video premiere we have for “Gay Pac” below. DUKE STAMINA’S debut album Super Horse Dads 2: TURBO: Tournament Edition [OST] will be out on Sweatband Records on September 6th, 2020. Preorders for the limited 12″ Lemonade Yellow LP can be found here. A little about Duke from Sweatband Records: Florida’s dirty little camp secret, DUKE STAMINA, is your new favorite rapper… And he’s probably already sexing up your father. Duke Stamina didn’t come out until he was 21, citing that a lot had to do with the inability to identify with the Will & Grace mold that gay men his age squeezed themselves into.

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Video Premiere: ZOOLUXX’s “WEIRDOS”

So r u still at home chillin? Have we arrived in a time where so called weirdos ain’t supposed to be cool in the modern day plague era anymore? Seeing a future far away from social distance and cognitive dissonance.  Reminiscent of true urban instrumental playa’s playin’ funky tripped out music from a retro-cassette deck, sporting clinical hazmat suits in mid-apocalyptic plague-zone mode; floating around in a downward spiral into the bottom of the once wiley westcoast streets of party wild LA… And all this without earphones too!  After quarantine, still skating through strange bio-hazardous, chemically loud, semi-viral beats that blow screeching through non synthetic (sunthetic?) programs. Aside the white walls of corporate industry warehouse branches, in the bushes admist the machine painted gmo leaves; Only not really smelling, but reminding the funky-attitudinal fear based flowers that perhaps they are just hookers for the bees.  In N95’s going outside of the frosty invisible perimeters, inside such an empty city of our icy toxic surreality, towards the self reliant resemblance of the re-humanization of an anti-social weirdo population of non-organic communication; No jive talk virus-spitting venom here! Capturing the vacancy of ones outer-personal space/the empty environmental zoning/fish back in the water

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Overkill

Photo Recap: Overkill at the House of Blues Anaheim

If you were to ask me who thrash metal’s biggest badass is, I’d answer you in half a second with the name, Bobby Blitz. New Jersey’s own devil, the lead singer of Overkill. Overkill just embarked on their North American tour, beginning with their House of Blues Anaheim show with Exhorder and Hydraform opening. It was a display of the dirtiest, most fun and carefree sort of thrash you can ever hear. Whereas plenty of thrash is about evil and hell, Overkill paints a portrait of the street life from the gutters to the alleyways that one could only get when growing up in a hard knock state like New Jersey. Overkill came out with their most recent album in 2019 with The Wings of War and unlike plenty of bands they came up with, they still sound fresh and brutal. The same goes for Exhorder who released Mourn the Southern Skies in 2019 to continue their tradition of creating some of the most brutal and groovy NOLA thrash metal in the scene. Photos by: Dillon Vaughn Overkill Exhorder Hydraform

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American Nightmare

Take This: Win Two Tickets to American Nightmare at the Fonda

In what can only be described as a match made in Heaven, American Nightmare and Ceremony have joined forces to tour for AN’s 20th anniversary pit stop at the Fonda. We’ve got two tickets to giveaway to the madness. YOU CAN BUY TICKETS HERE OR: ENTER TO WIN 2 TICKETS TO AMERICAN NIGHTMARE MARCH 13TH AT THE FONDA Step 1- Join Our Newsletter (look for pop up every time you arrive at jankysmooth.com) Step 2 – Tag a Friend in the comment section of our INSTAGRAM, TWITTER, or FACEBOOK American Nightmare Ticket Giveaway Post WINNER WILL BE SELECTED ON MARCH 11TH AT 11AM PST VIA EMAIL CONFIRMATION

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Madball

Photo Recap: Madball at 1720

NYHC legends Madball were in the house at 1720 and gave the entire venue a lesson in how much style and bounce you can pack into hardcore. These guys are OG’s in this game and by the sound of their set, it shows because hardcore this heavy and ass-kicking could only come from the mind and guts of a pack of guys who’ve been around the block. Accompanying the band for this show was Death Before Dishonor, Section H8 and Stone Cold Stunner. Every band’s hardness and brutality shined on this night. Check out our pics from the show: Photos by: Veronika Reinert Madball Death by Dishonor Section H8 Stone Cold Stunner

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