The following creators are not necessarily mainstream in their music or their art. But all are insanely prolific (sometimes literally) and driven by darkness.

All of them push their creative abilities to the extreme to exorcise their own personal demons, be they mental illness, emotional abuse, or a fear of the unknown. All have carved out a niche in the avant-garde or outsider arts, often combining music, prose and art as an all-inclusive creative statement.

While their efforts might not receive the attentions of, say, Lars Ulrich's lavish fine-art habit, their output deserves no less respect and attention.

More »

Photo by Marco Torres

The Flaming Lips performing at Free Press Summer Fest 2010

Next Tuesday, Flaming Lips will release their long-awaited new album, The Terror. Though the band has been constantly busy with side-projects over the last several years to tide their freaky fans over, The Terror marks their first "official" entry into their primary discography since 2009's Embryonic.

The album made its live debut at SXSW last month, where the band performed the new in its entirety to an unsuspecting audience of 15,000 at Austin's Auditorium Shores. Having been a part of that crowd myself, I saw the confusion on the faces of just about everyone in the audience who wasn't a hardcore Flaming Lips fan.

More »

[Ed. Note: This post originally appeared on Heard Mentality, the music blog of our sister paper OC Weekly. Longtime concert photographer and OCW contributor Andrew Youssef found out almost two years ago that he had Stage IV colon cancer. In that time, he has continued to shoot tons of music events for the Weekly on top of other freelance work and working a day job at a hospital, of all places. As he continues to fight for his life, Heard Mentality is allowing Youssef to tell his story in his own words.]

Photo by Lindsey Best

Andrew Youssef

It was close to two years ago that I passed out at work. Fortunately, I work as a pharmacist in a hospital and was immediately rushed down to the emergency room.

During the several months prior to this incident, I had lost about 20 pounds and started to get fatigued very easily. The streaks of blood in my stool probably should have risen more red flags. At the age of 35, my thoughts jumped to a possible diagnose of Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis.

When my gastrointestinal doctor appeared in my room, he suggested I have a colonoscopy and a CT scan to see what was happening. After the CT scan, I was wheeled down for a colonscopy.

Eager to hear about my results, I asked my doctor what the scan showed moments after being injected with some anesthetics. The last thing I remember before going under was the doctor telling me the scan showed I had some spots in my liver. Why would anything be in my liver?

More »

Axl Rose was surprisingly cultured.

It's not often that you get the opportunity to combine masterpieces of painting and metal. It's not completely unfounded, considering Guns N' Roses copped from Raphael's School of Athens for the cover of their Use Your Illusion set. But it's rare, like mixing pro wrestling and classical literature.

But if there's one thing I've learned from studying all these classic works of art, it's that some of these ancient artists possessed both the warped sensibilities of our modern-day metal stars and the artistic ability to translate that into some badass, demented paintings.

I'm not sure what it would take for a metal band today to license these works to use for their album cover, but if I was in a metal band, these would be high on my priority list.

More »

Jim Baldwin via Wikipedia

The release of the "controversial" cover art for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' forthcoming album, Mosquito, has managed to stir up quite a bit of buzz. (Leave me alone. I like puns.)

If you've somehow managed to escape the album-cover hype, I'll let you in on a little secret: you're not missing much in the way of controversy.

The offending image is simple: it's a naked, goo-covered baby in the clutches of a huge purple mosquito. It reeks of forcing the Garbage Pail Kids to sanitize their souls with a bath in the Pixar studios. My inner child weeps for them.

The cover is the brainchild of L.A.-based animator Beomsik Shimbe Shim, who readily admits that he hoped the illustration of "dirty, different, uncomfortable ideas" would garner a controversial response.

Well, a response he did receive. Fans have called Shim's cover everything from a "joke" to "front-runner for worst album cover of the year," so he has certainly stirred up some pretty virulent reactions.

But here's the problem. The responses aren't calling the art controversial, as Shim had hoped for. They're calling it flat-out bad.

More »

Photos by Nathan Smith

Black Queen Speaks

The Journey Agents, Knights of the Fire Kingdom, etc.
Dean's and Notsuoh
January 20, 2013

It's only been since October, but Hurricane Sandy already kind of feels like it happened forever ago. Hell, we've weathered a fiscal cliff, a school shooting and a Texans playoff loss since then. The news crews are long gone. For those of us blessed not to have been directly affected by the "superstorm," it's mostly been consigned to history at this point.

In the Northeast, of course, Sandy's effects linger on. The storm was the second costliest hurricane in U.S. history behind Katrina, and the rebuilding has only just begun. The American Red Cross has already spent more than $100 million on emergency relief in the region, with millions more to come.

That's a lot of dough, folks -- here's hoping it's all replaced by the time our fair city has to call upon the Red Cross once again. Luckily, not everybody in Houston has forgotten about Hurricane Sandy just yet. This weekend, an eclectic collection of Houston bands united for the cause, bum-rushing Notsuoh and Dean's downtown for an all-night Red Cross benefit.

More »

Forty-six years ago today, rock and roll got a hell of a lot weirder in the state of Texas. On Nov. 30, 1966, Austin garage band The 13th Floor Elevators released their The Psychedelic Sounds Of album on Houston's International Artists label. Powered by the raw, fluttering classic "You're Gonna Miss Me," the record helped fuel an acid explosion in rock from Buffalo Bayou to San Francisco Bay.

This is a record that still sounds edgy and unbound today. In 1966, it must have sounded shocking.

More »

BY JEFF ROCHE, LA WEEKLY

Halloween is the time where it's acceptable to wallow in the creepy, the crawly, the dark, and the macabre. Sounds like the themes of heavy metal, year-round! Here then, are those most spine-tingliest metal album covers, for your All Hallow's Eve viewing pleasure. Step inside...

More »

Remember the '90s? When it comes to Houston's rock scene, a lot of people don't. Sure, local bands were drawing large crowds to venues like the Axiom, the Vatican and the Unicorn, but much of the music of that era never made it outside the Beltway, and those clubs have been closed down for decades.

Unlike the underground hip-hop classics that were being pumped out in Houston at roughly the same time, the city's Clinton-era rock scene has largely receded from memory. For those of us who weren't there, it almost seems never to have existed at all.

That's unacceptable to J. Schneider and Brent Himes. The two of them played smogged-out shows together in the punk/funk/??? band Taste of Garlic in the early- to mid-'90s, and now they've co-directed a feature documentary about the wild, passionate scene that they remembered. The film is called "When We Ruled H-Town," and it premieres at 7:30 p.m. tonight at the Rice University Theater.

More »

Photo by Groovehouse

Female-degrading. Gun-loving. Conservative. All of these terms describe rocker Ted Nugent, one of the more outspoken right-wing conservatives in rock music today. Unfortunately (or hilariously), he doesn't know when to be quiet about his views on gun rights and any politician he disagrees with.

Some of Uncle Ted's views on various issues can also be seen in the form of the artwork on his album covers. Here are ten where he lets it all hang out.

More »