Flush it Friday: 20 Buck Spin, Those Beautiful Yinzers
Fuck the Steelers, though.
It’s Friday! Maybe you call it Fri-yay. I wouldn’t do that, because I still have, somehow, a modicum of self-respect, but I’m also a big enough person not to judge you for what is so obviously a social faux pas. Because, and here’s a thought: maybe you’re right to celebrate the today with a twee little portmanteau that ain’t hurtin’ nobody. At some point today, I will be done working, and I will be hanging out with my BFF, and we will be balancing spiraling about work with gut-busting irreverence and decades-long inside jokes that have lost all meaning but cannot stop us from howling with laughter. If you want to join us, you can find us posted up at the best bar in Atlanta: my patio.
If remember last Friday—and why can’t you? what’s your deal? what if you need an alibi for that murder you definitely committed?—I brought up release dates, Ross Gay, and all sorts of other stuff. Along with another of my closest friends, I am reading one essay a day from Gay’s new collection The Book of (More) Delights. Today’s essay has me thinking about tonight’s hang with my BFF. (In another essay, Gay discusses how a proper hang session cannot be timed—cannot be a thing that has a limit. In it, he calls one of his best hangs a “clockless motherfucker,” which is, to my mind, the greatest compliment I’ve ever read.) In today’s essay about his best friend’s birthday, “The Wide Berth,” Gay starts with the wide berth given to him by Vermont drivers as he stops on roadsides to forage for berries and apples and other gifts from the earth, and ends with a sentiment that “when Walt was born, so too was I.” We’ve gone from wide berths given to pedestrians on the side of the road to a broadening of our ideas of what it means to be birthed, to be born, and how we might be birthed several times over. If we’re given a wide array of births, and if we’re lucky in the way Gay and I are, one of those births coincides with the moment that our longest-tenured besties were born.
And how else are we lucky? What other delights can we find on this Yay-Day? (That’s an entirely different kind of day. Keep your drug test strips handy if you’re havin’ that kind of day, folks. Do drugs, but be safe!) We don’t even have to leave the Keystone State for more delights, more luck, more joy, more blessings. Born in Ohio but rised in Pennsylvania, educated at staples of Pennsylvania’s higher education system Lafayette College, Temple University, and every basketball court in between, Gay, who now teaches at Indiana University-Bloomington, is a Keystoner just like those beautiful brash bastards at 20 Buck Spin.
Located in Pittsburgh and at the fore of the modern death metal revolution, these absolute yinzers cannot help but share their bountiful gifts with us. Have we already forgotten that they, these fuckin’ mad lads, just straight-up released an entire Tomb Mold album on four days notice? What scions of sonic spoilation! And, just a week later, amidst everything else this label has done this year, they, again, out of thinnest of nowheres, tell everyone Vastum is back and give us the first new track from Inward to Gethsemane. Here it is!
No, this is not a premiere. No, we weren’t ask to promote this track by the label. This is just a simple act of sharing joy and delights. The riff that begins to build at 3:27 and then erupts just a few seconds later is maybe all we need to get us to that point of our Friday when the work is behind for the time being and all that’s ahead is a night of the comfort and ease and pleasure and joy of sharing it with someone you love.
What’s been your favourite release from 20 Buck Spin this year? What’s your favourite song if not your favourite release? What’s your favourite riff if not your favourite song? What’s your guess on how good this Vastum record will be? If we were to do a full-scale rundown of every 20BS release this year, how would we rank them? How would you rank them? I mean, Lunar Chamber came out in April!
But, whoa! Before we get to all that, we gotta flush. And flush we shall.
First and foremost: thanks to Stick and Roldy for keeping things going with TMP and TTT. Those deceptively “simple” posts take a lot of work, provide so much to the readers, and we are way too willing to overlook the weekly dedication of both those dudes (and their predecessors). Thanks, y’all!
Speaking of Roldy! He was majestic in how he set us all aquiver with this Seraphic Entombment track premiere:
Sepulcrustacean camped out and got in tents for this Plague Rider blowout:
We were Joein’ for a Blowin’ and got Jordan for a Boardin’ with Tha Boiz this week.
Spear hit us with a track premiere with an oddly unsettling music video. Get stuck with a Black Knife!
Reliquary Tower spent some time with Tommy B. and the Golden Moldies, and we’re all the happier for those comments about the riffs on Death‘s Leprosy.
365 got the hella outta dodge with this S.C.R.A.M. track premiere:
The Dungeon’s most esteemed Dweller Megachiles returns with the Doots and the Toots. Hole Dweller, baby!
What a week on the Toilet! Make sure to go back and read any posts you missed. Leave some comments. Interact with our intrepid contributors. Make this place fun and exciting. Everyone is doin’ this for the love of the game, so hop in and play it with us.
Oh, and hit us with them Goodz, Badz, Ugliez. And answer the 20BS questions above. And have a beautiful weekend. And read a book. And take a walk (if you are able). And pet a dog or a cat. And text a friend to tell them you love them. And do a little bit of stretching. And water those houseplants. And and and and and.
