PLaNETS - Scared Coyote

The day after I left for Chicago my wife went to Silver Lake's The Satellite (formerly Spaceland, where we saw one of the best shows ever in A Place to Bury Strangers) to see a band from LA that we love named Battle Tapes. As she tells it, she arrived before the first band went on, took a table on the floor and ordered a GlenLivet on the rocks and proceeded to be blown away by each band (Chastity Belt & Megafauna also played). PLaNETS however, stole the show, and again, based on how much I love the album and what she's told me about the performance, I can't wait to see this group live.

Battle Tapes

In my absence from keeping this blog there are SO MANY things that I have forgotten to put here. Take Battle Tapes for instance. In September 2011 my life had gone through a bit of a storm - I'd went through the slow death of Borders Books - a place I'd worked as a supervisor at for 5 years. And brother, it was a slow, painful death. Near to the end I was able to jump ship and begin a new career in the cryogenic field. That was August 2011, so like I said, September that year was a learning curve to say the least (I'd never had any experience in cryo-anything). Around this time my beautiful wife surprised me one Friday with tickets to see Helmet the following evening at, of all places, The Viper Room. Neither one of us like the Viper Room very much and this show was no exception. In fact, it pretty much made us HATE it. The place is soooo cool, if it was only run a little better. Case in point, the show had two bands on the bill and was supposed to start at, if I remember correctly, eight-thirty. Well, the club superimposed a local showcase in front of the Helmet gig and we ended up sitting through (by which of course I mean standing) two very, very bad "So Cal punk bands". Think of how much green day just absolutely sucks while trying oh so hard to convince every one - including me thinks, themselves - how 'punk rock' they are and then multiply that by about two thousand.

Yeah, that bad.

Anyway, by the time Helmet's opener came on neither my wife nor I were in a mood to tolerate even one more shitty band. Good thing Battle Tapes came out and BLEW THE FUCKING DOORS OFF THE CLUB. Really, I mean they were the highlight of the show, not really because they were better than Paige Hamilton and crew, but because when we had to leave only about seven songs into Helmet's set (Helmet! At a club as small as the Viper Room!!) it didn't hurt that bad because Battle Tapes was just that good.

I signed up for their mailing list and a few months later received word that they had released an EP for free on their site. Said EP is still available for free download here and I've posted their widget above so you can even hear it first.

It's sooooo good!!!