Some months ago, longstanding Houston record shack Sound Exchange moved from its second location in the Montrose to the new, hip and old-school East Houston neighborhood off Milby Street.
The new location at 101 N. Milby #3, Houston TX 77003 resembles their first location, a strip-mall at Dunlavy and Westheimer but is less spacious than the digs that the store occupied for twenty years at Hazard and Richmond, yet still makes for a comfortable record rack.
Expect to find three shelving units packed with vinyl, including lots of classic death metal, and a CD section which covers the best of underground metal as well as numerous local bands. Attention has been paid to acquiring rarities for sale while they are still in print.
Hint for hipsters: trendy Washington Blvd becomes Franklin Street downtown and then mainlines into Navigation Blvd, which crosses Milby right past York, which has become sort of the epicenter of outsider development of the formerly abandoned industrial East Houston area.
For those of us who have been attending these locations since the late 1980s, seeing the continuation of this classic record store warms the heart, especially as the number of places where you can find metal on the shelves decreases because Millennials buy streaming services for some godawful reason.
Death metal
Must be against
Women
Minorities
Rap
Jews
Liberals
Niceness
Kindness
Charity
I want danger nooooo democrappers
Fags must be like Milo yiannopolis in metal
It must be dark mean and against society
Fuck humanity fuck em all….
Scare people ok?
Stop being complicated metal needs to attack women and rap and diversity ok
Hahaha hey Brett do Jewish bitches like gal gadot and Kristen wigg Natasha lyonne have
Unholy ass smelly vaginas or what?
We have to ask Solomon Henderson, another victim of equality and diversity.
I was just there this weekend! Great selection and Curt the owner is a good guy. It’s been at its current location for more than a few months though. I went to the milby street location for the first time mid 2023.
Absolutely a good guy. No idea how long they’ve been there since time stretched and snapped after the flu panicdemic.
This all reminds me that as a teen it was always a weird feeling hitting the jackpot at a place like CD Warehouse or Half Price Books where hard to find metal albums suddenly appeared in abundance in the used section at times. While biking home (sounds lame, but the trek was 10+ miles each way) it was impossible not to eventually wonder why someone surrendered all that content at once for practically nothing…
But before you know it you get home and hear Emperor’s debut for the first time and stop caring about it. Those were the days. I feel bad for kids that don’t have real life everyday experiences like that anymore.
Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere.
Make everything too easy, and nothing is worth anything.
Applies to socialism, streaming music, and permanent agricultural civilization.
Strive to thrive.
Finding Ildjarn – Strength and Anger in the “Industrial gabber punk” section, those were the days
Thinking to check this place out. Do they stock actual heavy metal, or just the cosplay cry-wank stuff?
Actual heavy metal through black metal, including a lot of grindcore. They make a point of stocking as many classics as possible from Judas Priest through Darkthrone.
And Opeth.
He didn’t say only metal. He just said metal
To their credit, they put Opeth in the “disco and world music” bucket.
I used to work at Village Tropical Fish two blocks from the old location 25 years ago. I miss getting stoned and making the rounds to Sound Exchange, Vinyl Edge, and Diamondhead never knowing what you’ll find!
Does the guy from Agony Column still work here? I bought a Winger album from him back in 1990 or so. I hadn’t really heard Winger at that point and wasn’t sure, but Stu(?) said it would “get you the babes” or something. Anyhow, I’d really appreciate anyone still living in Houston to drop by and tell Stu that the album sucks and ask how much store credit I get if I return it.
Houston is a shithole; that is all.
The very best fucking albums ever in no order:
1 Dismember – Like an everflowing stream
2 Slayer – Reign in blood
3 Emperor – In the nightside eclipse
4 Darkthrone – Transilvanian hunger (vs Under a funeral moon it’s a tie)
5 Vargrav – Reign in supreme darkness
6 Gorgoroth – Pentagram
7 Suffocation – Effigy of the forgotten
8 Therion – Beyond sanctorum
9 Sacramentum – Far away from the sun
10 Necrophobic – Nocturnal silence
Gorgoroth, Therion, Vargay.
You’re clearly a victim just as much as a perpetrator of anal rape
I knew you were a filthy casual but I didn’t think you were dumb enough to listen to Vargrav.
Listening to it now. Strong early Dark Funeral and DMDS vibes.
Obviously a lot of ITNE imported through the Dark Funeral. I can see why people would like this: it ticks all the boxes, uses familiar rock forms within black metal, and is not random or inconsistent. However, the songwriting itself does not stand up to more than analysis on the level of form. ITNE and DMDS are simply stronger material.
Right, it imitates the aesthetics well but has none of the soul.
Indeed, and I think some rank it highly because it does that better than most others doing the same but, for what?
Gorgoroth, Therion, Vargay. Anal rapee?
Many bands took a different direction on their earlier albums. The first two from both Therion and Gorgoroth are quite respectable.
Also it is not fair to gays to compare them to post-94 black metal.
“Hah, you’re kissing another dude in the anus? That’s totally DSBM dude!”
1, 4, 7-10 who can argue
2 – any of the first four Slayers
3 – this or the EP
5 – N/A
6 – might mention Antichrist instead
…but distilling this to a top ten is very difficult. The first Therion is great too, for example, and we probably need Carnage in the Dismember silo. Then, Deicide… Demigod? …Incantation! …Pestilence, Sinister, Asphyx… and so on.
Morbid Angel is a huge omission. Either “Abominations of Desolation” or “Blessed Are the Sick”.
I have trouble getting my list down to below forty, but it starts to wane above fifty, if we include all death metal and black metal in the running.
Instead of grading alphabetically, I tend to see metal as one of those radial damage charts for nuclear explosions. There are forty that nail the target, another forty that get the next perimeter, twenty who hit weird and random stuff that is just plain interesting but not fit for daily listening, and then ten million that missed.
Honorary (almost as good and worth noting) top 10 in no order:
1 Celtic frost – To mega therion
2 At the gates – The red in the sky is ours
3 Morbid Angel – Altars of Madness
4 Deicide – Legion
5 Entombed – Left hand path
6 Immolation – Dawn of Possession
7 Dimmu Borgir – Stormblast
8 Massacra – Final holocaust
9 Morpheus descends – Ritual of infinity
10 Mayhem – De mysteriis dom sathanas
1-4 and 8 I listen to all the time, 9 is like Baphomet a guilty pleasure occasionally.
Did Entombed drop off for you? The Nihilist demos are better I suppose.
This goes back to the “Last.fm split” that happened some years ago: I realize that some acts which I esteem, I rarely listen to. Entombed became one of those, but when you have Carnage, Nihilist, and Unleashed, it becomes sort of a moot point. I still like the first couple albums but they do not stand up to the stuff I listen to most like early Sepultura, Massacra, Slayer, Hellhammer, Cenotaph, Demigod, etc.
Put Incantation somewhere too, I forgot about that. It’s fine it’s either top 10 or top 20, it could fit either way.
So many idiots want to turn black metal into Punk 2.0
They want it to be about rejecting everything sane and normal
That’s posing, not metal
This didn’t even work for hardcore punk, nor was it even true. Hardcore bands opposed idiocy. They were not blindly against success. Only losers argue for that kind of approach, because they want to justify being parasitic failures, and it runs contrary to both art and entertainment, which are aspirational if not transcendent (at their best).
The arbitrary top lists do not work for me, but somewhere in the canon, the first Incantation definitely belongs.
I was just doing God’s work by promoting anal sex.
I was just doing God’s work by promoting anal sex…
Every person of an Abrahamic religion or middle eastern heritage should engage in anal sex in perpetuity.
Ah yes, hit the perimeter.
Some days, one rocks out to Incantation and Massacra… and sometimes Beethoven and Schubert.
DEATH
Amorphis (1st)
Asphyx (self-titled)
Atheist (1st two)
At the Gates (1st)
Blaspherian (1st 2)
Cadaver (2nd)
Carnage
Celtic Frost + Hellhammer (demo and EPs, 1st LP)
Cenotaph (1st)
Cianide (1st 2)
Deicide (1st 3)
Demigod
Demilich
Desecresy
Dismember (1st)
Entombed + Nihilist (1st 2)
Godflesh (2nd)
Gorguts (1st 2)
Hypocrisy (1st 2 + EPs)
Incantation (1st + EP + 3rd)
Infester
Maleficarum (1st)
Massacra (1st 2)
Morbid Angel (1st 3)
Morpheus Descends
Necrophiliac (1st)
Necrophobic (1st)
Obituary (1st 3)
Pestilence (2nd)
Sentenced (1st 2)
Sepultura (1st, 3rd)
Sinister (1st 3)
Suffocation (1st 3)
Therion (1st 2)
Unanimated (1st)
Unleashed (1st 2)
Vader (1st)
Excellent list and I endorse all of these except “Obituary (1st 3).” I was under the impression Cause of Death was all you needed for this band. I remember the 1st album being quite good as well but think I only gave the 3rd album one listen. They are worth it?
Think what I most appreciate about you Brett is articles like this.
I believe I am slightly older than you…be 55 this year.
Most of the record stores that I visited as a teen are obviously not around any longer.
My first exposure to Bathory was fall of 86–a friend in HS made me a mix tape of Venom, Kreator and Bathory.
I lived in the sticks so not many opportunities to get to indie type stores.
It wasn’t until a year or so later when I was able to get the “goat” album (as I call it, the s/t).
RockIt Records” started as a small punk store and evolved. Spent decades going to that store.
Then gone. Digital music and streaming killed it.
I live in a different state now, but my town has a local store that has not only survived, but thrived.
It expanded recently. Vintage albums, new vinyl-huge metal cd and vinyl section. Shirts, novelties, etc.
Bizarre how some managed to survive..others crashed
I’m sure it’s not unique to my area, but some nearby record and book stores have survived (I think) in large part due to volunteers helping to keep things humming along, which isn’t exactly difficult for retail spots that don’t have a whole lot moving parts to be looked after.
That, along with stuff like renting out the space after hours for various functions, and teaming up with local music venues for cross-promotion.
I see a future for meeting spaces more than stores per se.
That is, you may be a record store, but you need to have a coffee shop, book supply, banquet room, and maybe karaoke/recording area.
You may be a book shop, but you should have records, coffee, cigars, banquet room, and seminar areas.
It’s a more expensive world we are going into. I wonder if property taxes will survive, since they are the parasite killing every local business.
Cradle of filth is the best album, obviously because if something doesn’t shatter paradigms, then it’s not metal.
If circle-jerk agreement is what we’re after, we might as well start listening to hiphop.
The revolutions are never revolutions.
“It’s a more expensive world we are going into. I wonder if property taxes will survive, since they are the parasite killing every local business.”
There’s also insane regulations that needlessly limit how a business can operate.
There was a very small old-school arcade up the street from me several years ago, and the owner caught hell from the city (i.e. they fined her ass) simply for not getting permission to add a popcorn machine and one of those little pub ovens for pizza. She ultimately couldn’t afford to upgrade the space to make it safe enough for customers to enjoy a snack in between games of Ms. Pacman. The city really saved everyone from themselves on that one, given that we could have had a popcorn-related tragedy on our hands.
Kind of a neat little spot though, given that it seemed to have a tight-knit community of regulars. Hobbyists would even repair and maintain the hardware in her vintage machines free of charge, which was nice of them because it turns out those things tend to break down kind of a lot.
The votards take things at face value. The bureaucrats say that they will save the votards from fire risk, and write ten thousand regulations that make it impossible to afford an independent business, so the big chains take over. The voters flap fetus hands and bemoan this, then do nothing.
Once maybe businesses did burn on a regular basis because people used hackjob installs. The way to handle that is a general purpose law about suitability and to jail anyone who screws it up and causes a problem. This shifts the onus back to the installers and business instead of shielding them with regulations, but the votards do not know this.
I have seen the scenario you describe play out many times. A local business does a good thing with thin margins; government steps in with regulations, income taxes, property taxes, and licensing fees and those raise costs to the point that the business cannot survive. In comes the chain with cheaper prices… at first. Two years later, the prices are higher and quality is lower.
The votards lose, but they are unaccountable and forgetful, so…. nothing is done.
Democracy is a dead letter like diversity, socialism, and “organized religion.”
Just to clarify – and not that it really matters – this issue had to do with a mandate that in order to simply heat up food the plumbing had to be overhauled so that there could be a hand washing station that no customer I’m aware of ever asked for. It also wasn’t even necessary since the bowling alley that shared the building didn’t care at all if people used their utilities – probably because there was a ton of overlap between clientele anyway (or they were just being neighborly) but apparently city regulators don’t care about minor details like that.
I do totally agree that it’s important to intelligently address issues like fire hazards due to shoddy construction or mismanagement, but nonsense like being expected to needlessly rip apart an old building (only because it’s “The Rules”) over something thoughtful customers understandably didn’t care about drives me up the wall. The whole issue struck me as more of a shake-down than anything. Hopefully stuff like that becomes less and less common.
I was never directly involved in that business, but it turned out to be a valuable cautionary tale in terms of what pointlessly baffling fine print and tons of red tape can do to an entrepreneur who’s simply trying to get by with the best of intentions.
I didn’t mean rant or hijack the topic, but the more I thought about that long-gone situation, the more irritated I got. It might finally be time to show up at a city council meeting…and quickly get ejected :)
That feeling when a perfectly functional snack bar in an arcade is shut down, but a city is allowed to grow out of control without its flood safety being updated (which becomes a problem when severe rain finally occurs)
I rape spic dykes jew dykes Greek dykes dutch dykes danish dykes Russian dykes horror rap dykes kill all white rappers fuck off
Hahaha
Hey Brett is it possible to destroy hip hop or rap metal I wanna know?
So says
The
Zarafasaurua zombie raprockzilla
Zika virus prime
Metal police
Mutate them all!!!
Die slow intro
Edie Lambert has a huge meaty pussy
Fuck da world
Tuprick Shakur
Rap sucks (Korn swallows)
The Internet sucks ass
Rape all vaginas!
Get bottomless or die!
Social diseasedia
Incelicons forever
Zikons from da planet Zikon you fool!!!
Vaginas are weak (Hail the cocks of geekz!!!)
Are you White Rich popular? (Fuck off then!)
I rape white dykes…
Killing people ain’t easy
Rap-rock is fucking gay (Wiggas are so damn lame!)
WWE is boring…
Kanewaiian remix
Base comes to hit your face…
All alpha males are closet fags…
Eat more pussy…
Mutate dem all nigga!!!
Rita Ora just loves shitting bottomless while giving oral (Bitch!)
Everything must die…
No change (Then perish asshole!!!)
Gay/palm death bitch Barney fucks Necro in da butt…
Wanna fight Ruth coon negga?
Wanna die Ruth coon negga? But first I’ll rape you hahaha…
Assrican Americans suck coons stink spics stink fuk em all…
Let it burn humanity!!!
Hey did u know about Ethiopian Jews Brett? What’s that shit about?
And should I clone bitches I wanna fuck or what?
Got a Japanese Irish joke if one is mixed with that shit…
What’s with the DC plane crash huh? What’s your take on that shit?
Would you legalize rape of mixed folks I’d appreciate it a lot…
Good question about the DC plane crash. Seems like someone turned off a transponder? I suspect just the usual human error, but maybe I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time they tried to psyop the Trumpster.
As far as humanity… I just want something where everyone can be happy and have pride in destiny. That’s ethno-nationalism for everyone. Mixed-race people will find a place to. We need less humanity, but that’s best achieved by making everyone have a purpose in life, so those who have no purpose will just drink, smoke, shoot, drive, etc. themselves to early but satisfied graves.
Basically, all I want to do is smoke weed and listen to death metal (and classical, and read philosophy). Maybe cook up some chili or gumbo, or go full Anglo and make a casserole… you know what they say about ANUS.com, we put the “ass” in “cASSerole.”
The downfall of the WASPs will always be the subpar culinary traditions. No one else was inept enough at the culinary arts to land upon the casserole and mushy peas as their prized dishes.
I don’t recommend deep fried foods, but mate: Fish and chips are tasty and you can’t seriously claim otherwise.
Beef Wellington is good too.
The meme of English food being shitty is as dumb as white people being unable to dance (check out ballet and ring gymnastics).
Ethnic Western Europeans — this is the only meaningful definition of “White” people — have their own martial arts, music, food, calendar, gods, dance, sports, and architecture. That however threatens the horde of people with no particular heritage or culture, so it cannot be mentioned in public.
Diversity like socialism and dualism tends to eat up societies from within. Bring back the wolves and pagan sacrifices!
The thing that got me off benefiting from marijuana back in 2012 or so was the rapidly increasing potency. It was enough that I began to wonder who it was even meant for. The days of pretty mild bags that were perfect for taking the edge off, getting a great night’s sleep, and waking up feeling fresh as ever are missed. Very therapeutic. None of the anxiety, paranoia, forgetfulness, etc.
But a co-worker was telling me about growing with LED lights vs. heat-intensive lamps when I mentioned an interest in very small-scale cultivation for personal use. Prior to that I was always concerned about the light source causing a fire. Maybe some day I’ll get around to splitting that atom of an idea to make something happen.
Anyway, speaking of death metal that goes well with being stoned, here’s an EP I hadn’t heard for a long time until recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6bV4Gty4l4
As a means of exploring up in the air (but still potentially good) ideas EPs strike me as underutilized these days…at least according to this cannabis-free curmudgeon.
Funny how people started rapping about the Chronic, then the rave kids got into it, and soon we had marijuana that might as well be an MDMA-opium hybrid.
The good strains are still good, but the question is how much of your life you want to spend being stoned. At this point, almost no one has a few free days to do nothing but get loaded and listen to death metal.
EPs were always great. The shorter length forces their selection to be intentional. Most of us at this point are spoiled by MP3 playlists or streaming, even though all the streaming services seem like avocado toast made with ass and cardboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_V9Hgiqdoc
The new Naked Whipper album is streaming!
It’s important to stand by the Brett measuring stick, because he’s God, so he’s objective truth when it comes to music and life in general, just so you know in case you plebs forget who your master is.
Because that’s the point he wants to prove that he’s God, except he’s a fucking idiot asswipe.
It’s important to realize the cookie cutter way to make your failed band is to listen step by step to uncle brettt, so you know you’re going to fail, because he’s right there to make sure youre going to fail by overythinking everything. Brett, congratz, you made sure metal stays dead beyond dead, which is in sync with your metal site name. Dead must stay dead, so you pretty much made sure the last vestiges of metal remain dead, isn’t that great???
I hate spics
I hate Australia
I hate dagos
I hate micks
I hate coooons
I hate lesbians
I hate jooows
I hate gay Bob’s like Korn Slipknot ICP ECT
I hate deathcore slaughter to prevail more cock in the ass…
I hate women who chase chads and ride hip hop cock all day…
Any way wasps could kill these people please id appreciate it a lot…
Hey Brett what do you think of this album cover huh?
It is called…
With a baby space Godzilla on the front cover…
The Killer
Kronosaurus prime rap-rockzilla
Kaiwhekea cop metal
Korn flakes Kourisodons
Holy Hallie Steinfeld’s cunt farts Batman!!! Who knew genocide was this cute and cuddly!?
Australia? What did they do?
I’m also confused. Although their response to the Corona Lung AIDS situation must have made feces-chucking apes blush.
Fuck Australia…
They have white trash there can u believe that wasps huh?
And is there such thing as a wasp rapper Brett huh?
So says
The
Mauisaurus prime
Mercury rap rockzilla
Police
Mercurions forever!!! All Jewish vaginas shall be knife fucked and mutilated to death!!!
I’d kill his or her ass…
I rape wigga skanks hahaha their vaginal juice looks like toxic slime HAHAHA but they make great targets for shooting with a Hawkeye arrows and shit…
Wiggers
Alphas
Aboriginal trash
Shitty accents
Horrorcore crap
Bad actors
Rap wtf is that doing there
Metal core fags
Bands like alpha wolf feat ice teetit faggot maggots body count shit is there for some faggot ass reason
Rap rock why?
Rap metal why?
Gangs are you serious y’all look like koala looking FAGGOTS DIE
ALPHAS WIGGERS CHIGGERS SPIGGERS ABORIGINAL RAP NAGGERS LIVE IN WTF? AUSTRALIA AINT COOL ENOUGH TO BE A FUCKING GHETTO COME THE HELL ON….
HEY BRETT CAN U CLONE A KRONOSAURZILLA TO MURDER ALL THE RAP CORE WIGGERS IN AUSTRALIA ID APPRECIATE IT SO MUCH CUZ ANYTHING LIKE EMINEM SUCKS DICK HAHAHA
Brett, I know you don’t like unions, buy is it possible you’re heavily colored by American union culture, which has a long history of deep corruption? Do you make any distinction between that and European collective labour agreements? I think life is a question of balance – without some moderate regulation, every side loses in the long run.
Balance requires clarity. Regulations are just a bad method; bureaucracies are unaccountable to results, only to method (means-over-ends). Similarly, unions are outsiders who have no presence in the organic population, but like bureaucrats are only there to apply some methods and profit. They always raise labor costs, not just wages but legal fees and additional staffs required to deal with the union issues and complexities arising from that mountain of rules. In my view, unions are bad in all forms, and the closest method of being fair is a hybrid of the Chrysler and German methods, which is to elect a worker representative to the Board. The reason this does not happen more is that the workers are in for a rude shock about their actual value, the amount of “free” money actually available, and how much the Dunning-Kruger Effect shapes their own perspective. Humans always scapegoat whoever is in power, then appoint criminals in their stead. It’s a pathology.
I’ve only ever worked along side unions (and even that was bad) but the one time teamsters tried to organize a place I previously worked at they didn’t even try to hide the fact that all they wanted was our over-funded pension in order to make “Central States Pension” solvent. What a bunch of sleazy people. They would park a big trailer across the street and cook up stuff like hot dogs while handing out leaflets in a desperate attempt for support.
Blue collar workers aren’t generally the smartest people, but even the dumbest of them knew to stay away from those thieves. Good decision, seeing as how that union managed to do a lot to tank YRC (a competing business) years later.
Brett, what is your opinion on crabcore? Do you think it is a serious genre of music?
No, it’s like pirate metal… a rebrand.