More Thor, Unknown Instructors And Pere Ubu To Emerge From Smog Veil

New albums from Canadian musical muscleman Thor, The Minutemen's rhythm section and underground legends Pere Ubu are on tap this year from Smog Veil Records.

The Chicago-based label, which is distributed in Canada by Zing/KOCH and FAB, is building on an eclectic roster that already includes Rubber City Rebels, Rocket From The Tombs, David Thomas And 2 Pale Boys, Amps II Eleven, Bold Chickenand The New Christs.

Chart favourite Jon Mikl Thor, known and loved far and wide for his rock music and rock-hard body, spent last year promoting his previous Smog Veil audio and video releases. He just put together four iTunes-exclusive releases: Best Of Thor: Volumes I, II and III (featuring such favourites as the classic "Keep The Dogs Away" and "Beastwoman From The Center Of The Earth"), and Early Years, which includes tracks from his previous bands Thor And The Imps and Thor Body Rock.

Thor is currently working on a new album, tentatively titled Devastation Of Musculation, with producer Mike Kischnick (Empyria, Severed Serenity). It should be ready for a late spring or summer release, and a North American tour will follow. A video for "Lords Of Steel" was shot in a mountain lake setting near Kelowna, B.C. last month. The label promises that the video "features plenty of highly charged Thor antics that take advantage of the Viking-esque landscape in that area."

Unknown Instructors are comprised of The Minutemen/Firehose drummer George Hurley and bassist Mike Watt with Saccharine Trust guitarist Joe Baiza and singer Dan McGuire. They recorded the follow-up to their The Way Things Work debut in October with help from David Thomas (Pere Ubu, Rocket From The Tombs) and Raymond Pettibon. The album, tentatively titled Better You Than Me, is scheduled for an early fall release.

This spring, however, 1968 Records and Smog Veil will release a limited-edition seven-inch picture disc featuring a track from the new LP along with an exclusive unreleased song.

While Thomas is already well-represented on the Smog Veil roster through some of his other projects, he's now enlisted the 31-year-old Pere Ubu into the fold. The new, still-untitled album is slated for a September release that will be supported by November tour dates.

"It represents a new branch of Pere Ubu song cycles and is unlike any Ubu album before it — while, of course, remaining unmistakably Ubu," says Thomas of the disc. "It is my take on the Jim Thompson pulp fiction of the '50s.

"In some ways I believe it to be startling. It is dark. It is obsessed. It hurts. The production is violent and, uh, different."

Smog Veil has also licensed music from Japanese cult labels Wizzard In Vinyl and Target Earth for exclusive iTunes distribution. Among the releases are Teengenerate's Live At Shelter and The Cokes' Heatwave, neither of which have previously been available in North America.

The label will launch a new website in April and free podcasting downloads with band videos and label news in May.