.: Casa de Diversion And Cover Songs That Will Hurt Your Soul.

I'm not going to lather myself up in baby oil and slide around the kitchen floor as if I'm entirely sure of what I'm doing, because I'm really not. I don't know a whole lot about Casa de Diversion, as I was only introduced to it by assistant gobshite, temple of doom treasurer, and good buddy, Joolz Palmer, this afternoon. What I can tell you about Casa de Diversion is that it is a bandcamp page full of underground metal and punk compilations that absolutely seethe with grit teeth animosity and repugnance. I haven't had my ears on the compilation scene since the glory days of blogs like Doomed To Be Stoned In A Sludge Swamp and Day After The Sabbath, both of which introduced me in my formative years to the music that I still adore in my early adulthood. They were both websites run by dedicated music fans whose sole purpose was to support the contemporary underground as well as to unearth classics buried beneath decades worth of dust, cigarette butts and crushed empties.

As far as I know, The Sludge Swamp has since gone private, but The Day After The Sabbath is still toiling in Satan's service, peddling out compilations full of classic metal, punk, krautrock, psychedelic, you name it. So, despite being out of the loop with the art of the compilation (or mix tape) in recent years, it's really refreshing to hear the kind of music Casa de Diversion is promoting and the manner in which it promotes it. I'd forgotten what it was I loved about compilations until checking out the CdD Bandcamp page today. It's like attending a wine tasting event, puking your fucking guts up after the first sip, but soldiering on until your stomach lining is toilet paper thin. In short, Casa de Diversion doesn't play around, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in broadening their 'musical horizons' (I fucking hate saying that).

However, perhaps the most interesting compilations that CdD has to offer are its covers series. So far, there are three volumes worth of cover songs by some of the most abhorrent, stinking, vile and noisy ghouls that the underground has spit up over the years, and from what I've heard so far, each track takes the original song, drags it through a mile of razor wire and blows its load all over the poor fucker's face. Some tracks, like Low Places' cover of "Deathcrush", are far more conventional than others, but until you've heard a Cranberries tune played by the sonic battering Vestiges, you haven't really captured the spirit of these compilations. That's what makes them special, you'll find yourself thinking "Fuck me, never thought I'd hear that one". Here are some of my favourite picks from the Casa de Diversions' cover compilations, just to give you a taste of the kind of hammering that these band inflict on the songs we all know, and either love or hate.