Just hours before the ceremony, I could be found a dingy, unshowered, greasy, smelly wreck of a human being at Spinnaker CDs in Hyannis. The store reminded me of what I recalled Newbury Comics had turned into from visits there years before (I don’t get to Massachusetts that often), with toys and DVDs and t-shirts supplementing the stock of music, which was ample enough. I spent a good 20 minutes dejectedly looking through their “New/Used” racks, not finding much of anything, before I stumbled on the “2 for $10″ wall.

There were a few Man’s Ruin-type goodies — Solarized and Disengaged I remember specifically, but several others too — but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already have. I did manage to grab an advance copy of TAD‘s Inhaler (somebody’s promo went down a long road to get to that shelf) and the self-released version of Proving Ground by Penance. I had the Martyr Music re-release, but figured screw it, the price was good enough and Penance rule.

The young woman behind the counter at Spinnaker was rude enough that even if I lived there, I’d be hesitant to go back. She didn’t tell me to fuck myself or anything, but the contempt was just oozing off her. Granted, I wasn’t at my best, but seriously, it was more than necessary, even for a record store employee. Compared to Newbury Comics at the Cape Cod Mall, which I hit on my way off the arm the next day, she was almost cartoonishly angry. In all likelihood, it had nothing to do with me and I was just the lucky sap who got to absorb it, but still.

I didn’t have any real goals for the weekend of shopping, other than picking up a full copy of the new Karma to Burn record, V, which I reviewed a bit ago (amazing how many broke-ass unsigned bands are willing to send out full-artwork promo CDs to reviewers and how many broke-ass labels aren’t), and they had it on the cheap at Newbury Comics, so I grabbed that, a used non-reissue copy of Turbo by Judas Priest and the Svidd Neger soundtrack by Ulver, which I haven’t been brave enough to listen to yet but was just so enthralled at the idea of finding a used Ulver CD that I had to buy it nonetheless. You just don’t run into that kind of thing that often.

By this point, vaguely hungover from the reception before, I was feeling kind of “meh” about the record shopping experience of the trip. Not that I wasn’t thankful to have found what I did (that TAD promo was cool, and Priest is Priest), but there wasn’t anything that really kicked my ass, so with some little haranguing of The Patient Mrs., I managed to divert our course into Providence for a stop at the Armageddon Shop on Broadway.

Of the trip’s finds, those from Armageddon were easily the best. All used, I picked up Shroud of Bereavement‘s first EP, 1999 Man and Long Day’s Flight ’till Tomorrow by Euroboys (both on Man’s Ruin), Pod People‘s Doom Saloon, the Ramesses/Negative Reaction split on PsycheDOOMelic, Conifer‘s first album, Who Do We Think We Are! by Deep Purple, the American version of We’re Here Because We’re Here by Anathema (such a sucker for that band; I bought it for the three bonus demos), Type O Negative‘s CD single for “Love You to Death,” and — in the spirit of finding The Satellite Circle last time I was at Armageddon and buying it despite knowing nothing about them — The End of Space by No Rest for the Dead.

That turned out to be a little noisier than I’d expected, and more abrasive in the vocals than I was really looking for, but it was cool anyway. Even better, though, was the cassette of Cathedral‘s The Ethereal Mirror for five bucks. They had a couple others too, but I figured that was a decent start. It’s going to suck when my car shits the bed and I don’t have a tape player anymore, but the ride back to Jersey from Rhode Island was pretty much set between that tape and the rest of the trip’s haul.

Here’s the list, with notes where necessary:

Anathema, Alternative 4 (digipak version)
Black Shape of Nexus, Black Shape of Nexus (metal tin)
Comus, Song to Comus: The Complete Collection (signed by band)
Fu Manchu, No One Rides for Free (the reissue)
Gomer Pyle, Idiots Savants
Horisont, Tva Sidor av Horisonten (tight-pants Swedish retro rock; meh)
The Machine, Shadow of the Machine
The Machine, Solar Corona (man this band sounds like Colour Haze)
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem One
Master Musicians of Bukkake, Totem Two
Pentagram, Sub-Basement
Pentagram, Show ‘em How
Red Sparowes, The Fear is Excruciating, but Therein Lies the Answer
Solitude Aeturnus, Adagio (rules; catalog now complete)
Spiritual Beggars, Mantra III (2007 reissue)
Temples, Temples (On the Radar here)
Totimoshi, Untitled (a demo with three new songs)
The Desert Sessions, Volume 3 & 4 (life is good)
VA, Welcome Back to MeteorCity
We, Livin’ the Lore
White Darkness, Nothing (given to me for free because it’s on Roadburn/Burning World and I’d spent a bunch of money)
Witchfynde, Play it to Death

Some of it I bought just to own. Like Black Shape of Nexus. I got their other full-length last year and listened to it all of once, but figured I’d keep tradition alive by buying this one and probably not listening to it. Plus it was in a metal tin. And yeah, that’s my third copy of that Anathema record, but fuck it. I’m looking forward to getting to know many of these albums — Temples, Fu Manchu‘s first (I’d been holding out for the original but couldn’t find it, so finally acquiesced to the reissue), Comus — and with The Desert Sessions and those Spiritual Beggars and Solitude Aeturnus discs, I managed to find some stuff I’ve had an eye on for years. Good times all around. Mark it eight, Dude.

Now, I put that in quotes because of the word order. Somehow I had the feeling there was going to be way more of the former two than the latter one, and when I got there and went downstairs into the shop, that did turn out to be the case, but the metal section was still bigger than what you find in most mainstream CD stores. And by that I mean it existed. I managed to grab Reverend Bizarre‘s In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend (because I haven’t yet convinced myself I just don’t like the band), the 1999 reissue of Celtic Frost‘s rare tracks comp., Parched with Thirst am I and Dying, and Cathedral‘s In Memoriam.

Not bad finds — the Cathedral I’ve been chasing for a while and you don’t see that Reverend Bizarre around much, so whatever. I was reasonably satisfied. I went to grab lunch and check my email quickly, see if there was anything else nearby I needed to do. One ham sandwich later, I discovered one of the several Music and Video Exchange shops was on the next block, so I (and my luggage, which I was trailing with me) walked down the five or 10 storefronts and there it was.

As I said, I was reasonably satisfied before, but while checking out the wares at the Music and Video Exchange, I noted there was a section apart from the heavy, extreme and contemporary (labeled “cont.” by someone who hopefully has a phonetic sense of humor) metal sections called The Pretentious Intellectual Avant Metal Section… Also Stoner Rock. And so I found my home.

They had a roughly alphabetized system of cards with the album titles — they wouldn’t have been able to fit everything otherwise — but the pickings were thick. I grabbed two separate Queens of the Stone Age promo singles, for “Burn the Witch” and “Everybody Knows that You’re Insane,” the self-titled Debris Inc. album, which I somehow let slip by when it was initially released, a Monster Magnet CD single for “Negasonic Teenage Warhead” — not their best work, but I miss New Jersey — a Japanese version of Firebird‘s Deluxe with the Obi strip, and the entire trip’s closest rival to the copy of Desert Sessions 3 & 4 I bought off Fatso Jetson, the 1997 Burn One Up compilation on Roadrunner, featuring acts like Beaver, Acrimony, Spiritual Beggars, The Heads, Sleep, Fu Manchu and others, the vast majority with previously unreleased cuts.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal, but this compilation is considered a touchstone in the development of stoner rock because it’s one of the first times the genre acknowledged its own existence. Burn One Up regularly goes for $70 on more on Amazon and eBay, and I paid a whopping 12 pounds for it. That alone might make it find of the trip, as opposed to Desert Sessions, which cost me 25 Euro. In any case, I was fucking thrilled. Grabbed and ran like Charlie with the golden ticket. Haven’t had a second to listen to it yet, but am very much looking forward to doing so as soon as possible.

Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us is not an album I’ve consistently gone back to, but for some reason, I recently clicked open the folder of promo mp3s from which the review was written and gave it another shot. It’s still formulaic, but as I stood with the copy of it in my hands and debated taking it to the register, I realized formulaic was exactly what I wanted. There’s no question there’s some filler toward the record’s back half — I know that now even more than the first time around — but that’s what I wanted. A metal album. Something I could put on and not think about. A couple catchy choruses, some decent guitar work, and done. Mind-boggling complexity is wonderful, but sometimes you just want to relax.

I felt way back in August and still feel “As Horizons End” is the strongest cut on the record. It’s the one that led me back to Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us, and a good portion of motivation for any subsequent listens will be to hear that one song. But what follows it, at least for the next four songs until you get past the title track, isn’t half bad either. I doubt the purchase will instill in me a wholesale new affection for the album, but hey, at least I know it’s on the shelf should I decide to pay it another visit half a year from now.

I could have just left. That probably would have been the reasonable course of action. But I’m not a reasonable man, and so — as I stared at the racks one more time and the archetypal cute record store girl behind the counter in the SunnO))) hoodie and Mastodon t-shirt with the dyed red hair began, increasingly, to give me funny looks because there weren’t that many other people in the store and I was the guy who’d been pacing around for almost 60 minutes — I finally just decided to grab something and go. That something was Across Tundras‘ 2008 full-length, Western Sky Ride.

It was right there, I was standing in front of the ‘A’ section, and I just wanted to get out of there. I panicked. And because I remembered liking the first Across Tundras record, 2006′s Dark Songs of the Prarie, well enough, I figured I’d be alright.

Wrong-o.

Out in the parking lot, I disrobed the disc of its shrinkwrap and popped it in, taking out the Them Crooked Vultures CD which I’d been listening to for the umpteenth time. The first song up was “Carrion Crow.” I don’t know what I expected of it — maybe something more atmospheric, ? la Earth — but what I got was sloppy post-metal that sounded like it was recorded in a basement (and not in a good way) and immediate buyer’s remorse. And the only good riff in the song? They fucking WHISTLED over it. Hey man, I’m all for experimentation, more than most, but throw me a bone.

I didn’t make it all the way through “Thunderclap Stomp” before just skipping to the last track, “Gallow’s Pole” to see if it was a Zeppelin cover. Once I ascertained it wasn’t, out came Western Sky Ride. Maybe permanently. There goes $14 I’ll never see again. Too much hip, not enough good.

I got lucky. My copy of the self-titled I picked up a while back at Vintage Vinyl in Fords for a whopping $4. Slow Horse II was ordered from this marvelous big truck we call the intertubes, and both records have proven to be enduring standouts among their shelf-peers. There’s something about the attitude and obscurity of the material that gives it a charm — like a secret full of killer riffs and stoned melodies that only a few people know.

Slow Horse formed in Brooklyn in 1997. Imagine that. In a sea of Korn-ripoff n?-metal awfulness, here comes three dudes with slow, sad, non-dissonant songs not about being the toughest guy in the world or being molested by their dads. Hell, on the first album, they covered Chris Isaak‘s “Wicked Game!” If you want to talk about not fitting in, “Wicked Game” in pre-irono-hipster-fascist Brooklyn just about covers it. And it’s a pretty killer cover too.

By the time they got around to Slow Horse II, their sound had developed into the eastern seaboard’s emotionally heavier answer to Goatsnake. Replacing that easygoing California groove with some raw New York intensity, the band managed to carve a niche for themselves that has yet to be duplicated to this day. I’m not going to say they never got their due, because anyone whose first record is selling for $65 and up is definitely being shown some respect (even if they’re not getting that money), but if you haven’t heard them in a while or never managed to track down either album, consider this a friendly recommendation. There are songs up on their MySpace and guitarist/vocalist Dan Buckszpan seems to be the guy to talk to about purchases.

Only bummer is it looks like when they broke up they had new material that never came out. If you look on their website, it says, “The band has been writing new material for their eventual third release, on a label to be determined…” which says to me there was a part of the story that never got told. Maybe they’ll get together in another decade like Snail and put it out. That’s a nice thought.

It was my first time in the state let alone the store, which was well organized by genre and alphabet. Prices weren’t cheap for CDs or vinyl, but they had some stuff worth paying for. The discs were in bins high enough so it didn’t hurt my back to lean over and look and had been meticulously alphabetized, despite a lack of “Ab-Af” type separators. I scanned my way through the rock section and managed to come out of it with VALIS, a Type O Negative (I’m on a kick) single, the last Uriah Heep record, the 2005 Place of Skulls EP Love Through Blood (that Victor Griffin sure loves him some Jesus) and — the one that I’d have gladly driven to Michigan for in the first place — the first of the two Toba Trance releases by Los Natas.

I think I’ve made it pretty clear since starting this site I’m a fan of the Argentinian rockers in both their free-form and more straightforward incarnations. Pretty much whatever they’ve got going on is cool by me, and since I already owned Toba Trance II, I knew what to expect going into its predecessor. The album track listing is as follows:

1. “La Tierra Delfin” (21:31)
2. “Que Rico…” (14:30)
3. “Due Possime” (16:20)

…so you can tell right from the start they’re not working with verse/chorus/verse radio singles. A three-song full-length full of far out jamming and the occasional Latin musical touch, Toba Trance is the kind of active ambience that most instrumental psychedelia tries for and falls flat. It just comes naturally to Los Natas.

Of course, I’ve only had it for three days so I’m not about to get into heavy-handed commentary on the enduring quality of the work, but from one friend to another, these songs feel damn good in my ears. Particularly if you tripped out on the jammier side of Delmar or M?nchen Sessions, which came out a year after Toba Trance in 2004, the meandering “Que Rico…” (those elipses are well-placed) will find a welcome spot between the two. It’s active and relaxing at the same time, and the best audio companionship I can think of for a day marked by driver’s fatigue and Jersey‘s summer haze.

The more I hear, the more I want to hear. Thanks to Postman Dan, FBC and their friendly staff for the experience.

And it wasn’t. The racks of used CDs were horizontal so you looked at the spines of the discs, there was plenty of vinyl around and not much standing room, Hank Williams coming from the speakers in a store with one of the coolest Melvins posters I’d ever seen. Nothing to complain about. I picked up a couple odds and ends; some Grief, Roadsaw, a Blind Guardian live record, Mobile by Dutch rockers Beaver, the digipak version of the last Type O Negative (I don’t care what anyone says, those are stoner riffs Kenny Hickey is playing), a surprising find in the first Monolithe CD which is something I genuinely never thought I’d own, and solely based on the artwork, knowing nothing about it, for $6.99, the self-titled album from The Satellite Circle.

I stood at the counter and asked the good-humored guy on the other side, “That’s pretty much gotta be a stoner rock CD, right?” He took a look at the front, turned it over in his hand, said, “Yeah, that’d be my guess,” and continued ringing up my purchases. My wife rolled her eyes.

Obviously then, The Satellite Circle (which I’d later find out was released by British label Rage of Achilles in 2001) was the first to go in the car CD player. I had to know what it was I’d bought. Sure enough, The Satellite Circle raged out in the classic rock tradition, throwing some psychedelic fluidity in for good measure and laying down a solid groove all the while. It wasn’t the most original or the best stoner rock record I’d ever heard, but hey man, I dug it well enough. Cool riffs, decent vocals, little to no bullshit. Easily worth $7 used. Check them out on the MySpace and hear for yourself.

The thing was though, as I listened to the cowbell pounding on “You Were Never the King” and “Simplicity,” I had to laugh. I mean, here was this record by this band I’d never heard of, and I grabbed it just because it looked like what it turned out to be. Total book by its cover on one hand, but on the other hand, I think it says something about how strongly established the branding, look and feel of stoner rock is. It’s kind of nice to be able to just grab this random-ass CD off the shelf and know that I’m going to at least be somewhat into what the band has going on. It’s like being able to read a code not everyone understands. I doubt in the long run The Satellite Circle will rank among my greatest purchases, but it’s an album I’d at least recommend others to check out, which is what I’m doing now.

Secondary point: keep your eyes open. Just because you haven’t heard of something you stumble on doesn’t mean you should disregard it entirely. And by you, I mean me. And by don’t disregard, I mean spend money. Killer.