Yoga Fire! – San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing: A Tribute Album

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Yoga Fire! – San Francisco Rush: Extreme Racing: A Tribute Album

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***This album specifically covers the N64 version. Sorry PS1 and arcade fans. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯***

Rush is a classic game. When it was released on the N64, reviewers said that it was brilliant – one of the top three games available on the system. Today it seems to be mostly forgotten. In my opinion it’s still an incredibly fun game whether you have never played before or if you’re someone who has been refining their skills on the game’s tracks for years.

The style here is a departure from my earlier Street Fighter 2 cover album. This album is more straightforward, and at times significantly more absurd. That’s a function of the source material. As with the previous album, I kept the melodic content mostly spot on to the game while altering the percussion to my own taste. I hope there are a few people out there who have the same kind of nostalgia for this game and its music that I do.

In the rare bits of spare time I’ve gotten this year I’ve been playing the heck out of Rush again trying to master the tracks. One day last April I picked up my guitar and plunked out a few of these songs absentmindedly. Turns out they’re pretty fun to play. Fast forward 6 months and this album exists.

Thanks to my wife Laura for the awesome watercolor replication of the game’s cover art.

Next up (without a 6 year gap between) will be the N64 classic Goldeneye, which will return more to the vein of the Street Fighter 2 album.

Listen gapless on YouTube

 

Bandcamp Daily – Offerings of Flesh and Gold Blurb

Bandcamp Daily: This Week’s Essential Releases: Black Metal, Art-Pop, Soul and More

“While they’re a black-metal band through and through on the sonics side, BoABoB (how’s that for an acronym?) aren’t ones for bellowing about spooky skeletons, virgin sacrifices, or eternal damnation, unlike the vast majority of their peers on Encyclopedia Metallum — LARPing while Rome burns is kind of a luxury, after all.”

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Meat Mead Metal – Offerings of Flesh and Gold Full Review

Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze Put Hypnotic Black Haze Over Chaos on “Offerings of Flesh and Gold”

“If you haven’t yet woken up to Colorado/Washington black metal blazers Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze, make that correction right now. There’s a link to the record below. Go listen to it immediately. You can do that and read this piece at the same time. The band’s devastating and mind-bending debut record “Offerings of Flesh and Gold” is one of the most amazing first records I’ve heard in a long, long time. Maybe the last time I was this excited was with FALSE’s first EP, and we all know how that story turned out.”

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Forrest James – Offerings of Flesh and Gold Full Review

Bull of Apis, Bull of Bronze make an Offering to the movement

“Many lament the saturation of black metal with politics, but it is deeply necessary. More so than any other genre, black metal has explicit stratifications of ideology. Slayer and Pantera may dabble in thinly veiled racism, but Burzum and Emperor spawned a well defined sub-genre of nazi metal. It makes sense in a way for it to be black metal to succumb to right-wing extremism, and it makes even more sense for the genre to now give voice to the left. The concentration in black metal of theatricality, gravitas, and extremity lends itself to transcendent visions of the future. And visions of the future is exactly what distinguishes opposing radical political ideologies from the mainstream: we see a future rid of hate and control and violence; they see a future rid of us. And as much as the mainstream likes to think the world is static, the future is always coming, and it will be one of those visions. That’s what makes Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze and other explicitly anti-fascist black metal bands so important. ”

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Treble – Offerings of Flesh and Gold Full Review

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Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze : Offerings of Flesh and Gold

“…The focus, power, and beautiful of these compositions, along with their masterful pacing both internally and over the course of Offerings of Flesh and Gold, place Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze’s debut up in the echelons of truly great affecting extreme metal, alongside other greats like Wolves in the Throne Room and Neurosis. There is no such thing as interior versus exterior politics, and they know this; politics is the material result in the world of some great undeniable motivating force that dwells in the spirit, and it is toward this spirit that Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze so powerfully gesture and attempt to communicate. This is, without a doubt, one of the very finest records of the year and a powerful contribution to the two worlds of black metal and of political music.”

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Heavy Blog Is Heavy – Offerings of Flesh and Gold Blurb

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Kvlt Kolvmn // June 2019

“Ah. Black metal and politics. For some, ne’er the twain shall meet. For others, it’s a principal driver behind why they do (or don’t) listen to the music. Whatever side of this divide you find yourself on, it would be very difficult to argue against the fact that politics has become (and, frankly, has always been) a key component of black metal as a genre. Colorado/Washington-based black metal monolith Bull of Apis Bull of Bronze make no attempt to hide the political undertones of their music, staring point blank on their Bandcamp page that there’s is music ”hoping to channel that energy into creating tangible change.” If that isn’t a shot across the bow of black metal’s most controversial topic I don’t know what is. Whether or not you find their politics agreeable, BoABoB are using extreme music as a vehicle to achieve political ends, and if we’re to judge that vehicle’s value by the quality of the music, were most certainly headed toward societal change in a somehow eco-friendly V8. ”

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