Every Friday—well, this week Wednesday, cause we’re fuckin’ OUTTA HERE in four hours—Waldo the African Grey Parrot, frontbird of thrash-grind immortals Hatebeak, will get you caught up on the week’s latest “extreme” releases.
Waldo here. There are a couple of new releases that really ruffle my feathers this week.
The first is the Rhino reissue of Cowboys From Hell: Ultimate Edition from Pantera. Just in time for the 20-year anniversary, this 3-CD box set comes with live material, a previously unreleased track, demo versions and a remastered edition of the original record. Let’s hope they put some low-end in it this time. Other goodies included are an All Access tour sticker, some posters and, just in case Hot Topic runs out of their never-ending supply of Pantera shirts, a shirt designed by Dimebag himself. At $99.98, this thing should be on the shelves for quite some time. Too bad you can’t download a shirt. For diehard fans only.
The boys in Clutch pop up again with re-releases of Blast Tyrant, From Beale Street to Oblivion and Robot Hive/Exodus on their very own Weathermaker Music imprint. If you can’t find the CDs in your local cutout bin, or want these releases on vinyl, this is for you.
Knuckledraggers unite! Job for a Cowboy release their particularly bland deathcore classic Ruination on wax. This release, however crucial in the annals of metal, represents what’s wrong in the current state of music. Sure to be eBay gold on vinyl in a couple of years.
Finally, Phobia are releasing Unrelenting on Relapse. The title describes both the Phobia work ethic and the concept of this soon-to-be crust/grind/metal classic. Never reliving their days of yore (read: Means of Existence), these 17 stabs don’t spend any time messing around; Unrelenting gets straight to the point, and continues to drive that same point into your skull repeatedly. This is destruction, pure and simple. A nod to the excellent production by Scott Hull, too.
