Mask, and Ye Shall Receive

Angine de Poitrine - Sherpa

OK, now there's been another 1946 death.... when's the one we're all waiting for? I'm just kidding. Or am I?

I'm working on Dolly P and Tim C, but today we're continuing with the hard-rockin' posts I seem to be backloading into August with these guys, just your average microtonal masked math-rockers.

The story goes that they had booked two slots at a venue on the same night and were trying to fool the promoter into thinking they were a different group so he'd pay them. It's always the promoter with the money, isn't it?

So they fashioned these crazy papier-mâché outfits and went on as a totally different band than the one that had played earlier in the evening. It worked, and an Affectation vs. Authenticity debate erupted as they began to go viral.

They concocted a whole narrative to go with the personae: that they were ETs from another world where everyone is famous, and it takes 6 hours to go to the supermarket because everyone has to sign autographs for everyone else. And so on.

Now, whether the costumery has anything to do with the music outside of the Magma-type storyline is up for debate, and this isn't Peter Gabriel-era Genesis where every mask is meant to move the characters being portrayed through the song.

Of course they've become, overnight it seems, one of the world's biggest bands, with slots at festivals on every continent this summer. And they've done so with a truly unusual brand of music, played as it often is in truly unusual time signatures, and with the barefoot, polka-dotted guitarist manipulating who knows how many live loops with his feet as they cycle through their tunes.

Anyway there were no 'board sourced boots of these cats until they played Fuji Rock a month ago today, and the HD video documenting their set got taken down pretty quickly, but I managed to pilfer the audio from that feed before it disappeared into the aetheric realms of copyright.

So, what do you say, O Court of Public Opinion? Hype? Sincere Progressive music with a theatrical twist? Somewhere between those poles? Dynasty-era KISS meets the scalloped-fretted guitars of Shakti on the Math Rock mountaintop? The floor is yours, apple cores.

Angine de Poitrine

Fuji Rock 2026

Field of Heaven

Naeba Ski Resort

Niigata, Japan

7.26.2026

01 MC introduction

02 Angine de Poitrine intro

03 Angor

04 Yor Zarad

05 Tamebsz

06 Mata Zyklek

07 Ababa Hotel

08 Sarniezz

09 Fabienk

10 Sherpa

11 Angine de Poitrine outro

12 L'Aberek/Ababa Hotel

Total time: 1:19:32

Track 12 is a bonus track from Session Secrete @ La Société Secrète de Cap-d'espoir en Gaspésie 

Percé, Quebec CAN 8.18.2025

Khn de Poitrine - guitar, bass & vocals

Klek de Poitrine - drums & vocals

320/48k audio extracted from enhanced bitrate HD YouTube Premium files

spectral analyses is lossless to 18 kHz for both

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, edited & remastered by EN, August 2026
530 MB FLAC/direct link

Personally I dig what these guys do, and beyond the hidden mystery schtick they are obviously badass musicians. I liked this show so much, I even added a bonus track that I came across, just because I felt like it.

I'll be back with one or two more at the tail end of the month, but until then I'd encourage you to peek behind the mask for a moment and take a taste of what these crazy Québécois from Canada are up to with their many-fretted micro-guitars, obscured identities and 21/8 loopy moves.--J.

Beyond the Realms of Birth: Rob Halford 75

Judas Priest - Breaking the Law

Well there's been a departure, and it's a big one. But it's also a milestone birthday. For someone who once famously sang with the departed on a TV show, in one of the oddest musical pairings ever witnessed.

Yes, that happened. So Dolly is dead, but the man folks call The Metal God -- deities know what other deities with which to sing, that's part of being one -- lives on, celebrating his 75th today.

When we were kids, if you'd have told us the singer of everyone's favorite Metal band was a homosexual, you'd have likely caught a beating at the bike racks after school.

It turned out not to matter, and as a stereotype-shatterer on legs, he can take a teeny bit of the credit. He sure brought gay BSDM gear into the vocabulary associated with music apparel, we can all agree on that little factoid.

Of course it helps to have one of the most identifiable voices in the history of all music in your mouth, if you're gonna go evaporating homophobia by example like this.

He's taken care of his instrument too, and can still sear-pierce the atmosphere with that trademark shriek.

Did I mention that Judas Priest was the first band I ever saw live? On September 1, 1979 in the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale NY, opening for Dynasty KISS.

We all must be getting very old very fast, because the intervening 47 years went by in an instant, and Rob Halford -- the young blond guy in the Leather Daddy Of The Year gear that rode the motorcycle onstage to begin my Live Music Life -- is 75 years old today.

Anything else I would say would just be filler, so let's get to this killer show, taped 45 years ago -- probably my favorite Judas Priest bootleg, and possibly in the ever-raging 1000 Best Boots Of All Time debate too -- that puts the meat on the bone about what makes JP definitive in their field far better than words will ever do.

Judas Priest

The Palladium

New York City, NY USA

7.22.1981

01 Supergroups intro

02 Solar Angels

03 Heading Out to the Highway

04 Diamonds and Rust

05 Hell Bent for Leather

06 Breaking the Law

07 Sinner

08 Beyond the Realms of Death

09 Grinder

10 Desert Plains

11 Hot Rockin'

12 You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise

13 Victim of Changes

14 The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)

15 Living After Midnight

16 Tyrant

17 Supergroups outro

Total time: 1:19:09

Rob Halford – vocals

K.K. Downing – guitars & vocals

Glenn Tipton – guitars & vocals

Ian Hill – bass & vocals

Dave Holland – drums

Supergroups MC is Pat St. John

Supergroups In Concert "A Night On the Road" pre-broadcast LPs from the ABC Radio Network

transferred at 24/48, denoised and organized by LiQuiDz (Master Series 001), July 2022

converted to 16/44 CD Audio, slightly retracked and remastered for overall crunch by EN, August 2026
581 MB FLAC/direct link

I used the stellar 40th Anniversary LiQuiDz transfer of the pre-FM LPs for this, but I thought it was too drummy and the guitars were a little distant, so (as this is guitar-based music) I beefed it up slightly with the Audacity Legacy Limiter. Don't be mad, LiQuiDz! I think it shreds viciously now.

I'll be back in 24 with some more heavy sounds -- these are from just last month, and the crazy Canadians making them claim to be ETs, and wear bizarre masks when they do it -- but today is the day we go living after midnight, and kneel before everyone's favorite Metal God in birthday tribute.--J.

Dime Regained: Darrell Abbott 60

Pantera - This Love

OK, so if you're wondering where I am, I ain't dead yet. But my husband and I bought part of a restaurant downtown, and I've been hard at the task of constructing a whole series of playlists for the music in the place. I'll share them all here when they are all done in a couple of weeks, but there's a Roxy Music one, a 10cc one and a The Who one so far, and they are all around 4 hours long each.

That aside, I'm back here today for a milestone berfday of someone who, to state the obvious, should still be with us, wailing away.

He's gone decades now, and the idea that he only lived to be 38 years old will never be anything but one of the most unspeakable tragedies in the history of all music.

We all know what happened, and the 22 years since haven't made it any easier to swallow.

Assassinated live onstage because the gunman was upset the guy broke up his original band and started another one. I'm combing my brain for a less justified reason to kill anyone, and I'm coming up total zeroes, folks.

The way he was killed sometimes obscures what he accomplished whilst alive, as is often the case where If It Bleeds, It Ledes. But let's focus on his life, which still has a resonant impact today, OK?

He came into music at a distinct advantage, with a dad who'd produced Country artists in his native Texas, and by the time he was 16, he had his first record out with the band for which he'd become most beloved.

It took the rest of the Eighties, but by 1990 Pantera had really started to ascend. First on that year's Cowboys from Hell and then on their 1992 masterpiece, A Vulgar Display of Power, their sound quickly coalesced and they became huge.

In no small way a disciple of Eddie Van Halen, if I had to describe what he did that distinguished him from the trillion or so other Metal players of our lifetimes, it'd be the propensity to shift from the pyrotechnic to the melodic, often within the same few bars and the same solo.

If I had to pin it down, I'd say that somewhere between EVH and Deep Purple/Rainbow axemaster Ritchie Blackmore resides "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott, who was born 60 years ago today.

Ranked #92 on Rolling Stone's Greatest Guitarists list, and #5 on the all-time Metal list, he's one of those players whose playing is always totally recognizable as his own, even amidst the aforementioned ten trillion other dudes who've attempted that style since Tony Iommi accidentally severed his fingertips and decided to tune down a half step.

To celebrate Dimebag Darrell and ensure us 1966ers stick together, I've cobbled together a complete version of a 1992 Pantera concert from the Hollywood Palladium that circulates in three different, not-complete forms, and documents their arguable apex, before internal tensions with their singer turned things sour.

Pantera

Palladium

Hollywood, California USA

6.27.1992

01 Heresy

02 Mouth for War

03 Domination

04 Hollow

05 Fucking Hostile

06 This Love

07 A New Level

08 Walk

09 By Demons Be Driven

10 Psycho Holiday

11 Primal Concrete Sledge

12 Cemetery Gates

13 Cowboys from Hell incl. Purple Haze

Total time: 1:00:22

“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott - guitars

Vinnie Paul - drums

Rex Brown - bass

Phillip H. Anselmo - vocals

preFM master CD from the Westwood One network, sourced from the bootleg CD "High Voltage" on the Massive Attack label

Tracks 05 & 07 inserted from a speed corrected master FM cassette of indeterminate origin

edited, retracked, repaired & remastered for unity by EN, August 2026
439 MB FLAC/direct link

This one was a trip, because there were a couple of instances where the cursing was edited out of the pre-broadcast CD, yet somehow made it out on air for the original broadcast. I did my best to restore the thing as best I could, including reconstituting a couple of those omissions.

I've got a few things lined up for the rest of August, and I apologize for my absence. But I'm doing that other project and there's only so many hours I can spend in front of Sound Forge, you know? Making 750 songs all the same volume by hand is not something I'd wish on anyone. OK, maybe on people who walk into clubs and murder the band onstage with automatic weapons, let's just say.

Anyway, I get that this kind of music isn't the usual fare on here, but I've wanted to cover the very deserving Darrell Abbott for years, and felt today was the day to drop the Dime on just such a display of the power still implicit in his playing.--J.

8.20.1966 - 12.8.2004