Blast(beat) from the Past: Assault

Assault
Assault
H:G Fact
2001
Are you like me? Do you obsessively read Jon Chang’s liner notes for the Discordance Axis albums and become enraptured in his thoughts on font? The guy wrote a song called “Typeface,” f’chrissake. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who’s ever geeked out on font design and what it says about us and how they can manipulate our mindset. (C’mon raise your hands if you’ve watched Helvetica or if it’s still bouncing around your Netflix queue somewhere). Such is the power of the visual art, eh, Sunyata?
The point of all that being, I bought Assault’s self titled album a few years back completely unheard for two simple reasons: it’s Japanese and the interesting typesetting looked like something Chang would cook up (it’s not) considering his visionary design work for bands like 324 and Asterisk*.
I may have been wrong on the art, I was right to trust my instincts when it comes to the Japanese. Assault revel in the strain of no bullshit hardcore that will never go out of style as long as there’s a pissed off teen in a basement somewhere. No experimentation, no chug-a-lug breakdowns, just furious punk storming straight ahead. The songs have some metallic heft to them and just a sheen of melody in spots (“Method’s” moody opening) but they’re assaulted with reckless, energetic abandon that prizes punch over precision. Bullet-belted and leather pantsed guitarist Osamu looks like he stepped out of a bad Possessed or Destruction cover band circa 1991 while Kaoru slaps away at bass strings that sound like slackened phone lines and drummer Kentarou recklessly bangs at his kit. Frontman Satoru has such a charming Engrish delivery as he barges through a song like “Victims for Jackyls” (or “Veectimsssssaahhhhhh for Jackuuuulssaaahhhhhh”) that you can’t help but bang along.
Assault hit it and quit it in an easily digestible 20 minutes that makes multiple rotations of head down bangers like “Go for Lust” and the Motorhead-inflected “Object of the Attack” mandatory.

I know nothing about either the band or the album beyond that. It’s Japanese; it’s hardcore; it makes me smile.

G&P Review: Magrudergrind

Magrudergrind
Magrudergrind
Willowtip
It’s hard to picture Norwegian black metal evolving as it did were it not for its fog-wrapped forests and ice-floe choked fjords as a backdrop. And we never would have been blissfully pummeled by the nihilistic machinery of Godflesh if the industrial clang and smog-choked atmosphere of Birmingham hadn’t weighed upon Justin Broadrick so oppressively.
My point being, grindcore tends to lack a sense of place. It’s either involved with issues too macro (war, destruction, government malfeasance) or too micro (just how many severed cocks can you cram in a suppurating pussy?) to take notice of its surroundings and draw inspiration from its own neighborhood.
None of that would have occurred to me were it not for Magrudergrind whose eponymous second album and Willowtip debut so perfectly encapsulates D.C. – a schizophrenic city that’s both overwhelmingly poor and black and at the same time home to the nation’s white (in every sense of the word) halls of power. But the trio of Avi Kulawy (vox), R.J. Ober (guitars) and Chris Moore (drums) thoroughly capture the city’s vibe on a sample-laced album that touches on themes of gentrification (“Fools of Contradiction”) and the divide between D.C.’s Fedland core and its impoverished southeastern swath (“The Price of Living by Delinquent Ideals”). Even the elegiac and stirring “Martyrs of the Shoah,” the last true song on the album, comes off as downright prophetic after a geriatric bigot from the burbs decided to shoot up the Holocaust Museum to impress the RaHoWa retards back home.
Sonically, everything is polished to a sheen courtesy of producer Kurt Ballou and mastering by Scott Hull (who selected the band for his This Comp Kills Fascists throwback) as Magrudergrind blast through half an hour of ferocious punk at the nexus of grind and power violence. The Magruders do throw the occasional curve ball with the slow kindling “Bridge Burner” or the hometown shout out, white boy funk of “Heavier Bombing” that’s one Chuck Brown cameo short of perfection.
This is the sound of band coming into their own, kicking back with a half smoke at Ben’s Chili Bowl and deciding to pen a love note to the city.

[Full disclosure: Willowtip graciously provided me with a review copy.]

Blast(beat) from the Past: Selfhate

Self Hate
At the Beginning God Created Fear
Selfmadegod
1998
Self Hate did for Polish grind what Vader were for the country’s death metal rep. At the Beginning God Created Fear is a remarkable time capsule of mid-’90s grind, a cross pollination of Scum and Jouhou that rolls in Horrified’s signature rattling bones and open grave fetor production style.
At the Beginning God Created Fear is a time capsule from an era when grindcore was still a jumped up hybrid of thrash and hardcore that had yet to firmly establish its boundaries and rules. Self Hate lard their blast beat onslaught with nods to European thrash that could have been swiped from just about any early Kreator album such as the stop, start cymbal grabs of “Na Naszych Oczach” or the double kick pitting of “Exterminacja.” At the same time, At the Beginning straddles the line of what we would consider modern day grindcore as Self Hate staggers through the alternating vodka stumble and exfoliating blast wail of “Mundurowe Swinie” and brute bullishness of “Experyment.” “Zaraza” even plays out like an extended, two minute cut of Discordance Axis’ “Dystopia,” complete with Jon Chang bitch screams.
Poland has proven itself to be a grindcore powerhouse in the 21st Century looking back with trad bruisers like Exit Wounds and laying claim to new terrain with grindonauts Antigama, but the country’s contributions to grind go back even further with Self Hate holding a proud place as gatekeepers.

G&P Review: Jesus Crost

Jesus Crost
Tot
Bones Brigade
There’s no drum machine in Jesus Crost’s arsenal but the Dutch duo channel the mechanically-enhanced vibe of recent Agoraphobic Nosebleed or Enemy Soil on Tot. Even the artwork has a Prosthetic Cunt’s Eurotrash cousin vibe to it. But nope, no drum machine. Just a guy in a lucha libre mask who calls himself 10 beat blasts in time with a guitarist known only as 13.
While Jesus Crost, on balance, may not have honed their songwriting chops to the scalpel edge of the aforementioned, Tot boasts a raw, wood shop guitar tone and “Geheimfavorit” could have been lifted off of just about any era Enemy Soil 7-inches. There are other flashes that hint at the band’s gestational potential to grow into a respected player in the Euro grind realm as well. The bouncing opening of “Der Schnock” will get your wooden shoes tapping and “Milevsky” slo-mo wades through 30 seconds of the same quicksand murk that defined Nasum’s “The Final Sleep” before being tattooed by relentless blastbeats.
Things do go off the rails late in the album, though. The band squander whatever good will they’ve accumulated, unfortunately, as they close out their album anticlimactically with their live appearance at the 2008 Obscene Extreme Festival, 10 minutes of the worst live recordings you’ve ever heard. Seriously, the first couple of listens, I actually thought it was some sort of lofi electronics dickery.
But that’s easily ignored. While Jesus Crost may need to invest in a better live sound engineer, Tot shows the band already has a confident handle on its studio sound.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Slight Slappers

Slight Slappers
Tomorrow…Will the Sun Shine Again?
H:G Fact
2005
The line “Tomorrow, will the sun shine again?” appears in Ryuhei Kitamura’s 2002 execution gone wrong flick Alive (itself based on a manga by Tsutomu Takahashi). I don’t know if there’s any direct connection between that and this platter of exquisite punk noise from Japan’s finest purveyors of power violence, but I just thought I’d throw it out there.
Everything about Tomorrow is raw, with a blown out production that highlights every pick squeal and cracked cymbal crash, but Slight Slappers manage to fight through that skateboard injury sound to craft genuinely hummable tunes. If the scabs were scraped off of “The Ocean, August and Blue Memories” and the song was re-recorded with cleaner guitars, it easily could be the hook for one of those annoying Carnival cruise commercials and just maybe they could stop abusing Iggy Pop’s junky odes.
For an album that’s less than a dozen minutes long, Tomorrow is laced with those kinds of touches. The headlong punk of “Sweet Box” drones off into a swirling melodic maelstrom that in turn segues into the bouncing faux-pop opening of “Flystar.” But the pinnacle of the Slight Slappers’ distorted melodi-punk approach is the close out title track, another commercial jingle candidate as performed by a power saw quintet with gently draped guitar lines of the sort Ben Carr bangs out with regularity.
Man is the Bastard famously coined the term West Coast Power Violence, but if they’d taken a moment to look to their right, there was another potent power violence storm brewing just across the ocean.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Apartment 213

Apartment 213
Discography
625 Thrashcore
2005
Apartment 213’s “Kill for Christ” is the single most perfect power violence song ever recorded east of the Mississippi. The implacable mid-tempo stomp is like being stalked by Jason Voorhees; the foreboding bass never alters its tempo but you know somehow it’s gaining on you no matter how fast you run. Then the machete-like lead riff comes slicing through your body from a direction you never expected. The sludge menace and audible violence of that song alone perfectly embody everything power violence strove for.
And that’s just the second song on these Cleveland bruisers’ 40 track discography, collecting the early works of one of only two bands to get Eric Wood’s rare imprimatur as genuine power violence (the other being The Endless Blockade). Hell, the entire affair kicks off with one of the most beautifully unhinged phone messages ever captured by recording technology.
Like Macabre before them, Apartment 213 had a fixation with serial killers, especially mid-90s Midwestern freak Jeffrey Dahmer (duh) through the métier of unhinged punk and the kind of gutter psychosis that would have Henry Rollins curled up under his bed with a teddy bear. The awesomely named Steve Makita sounds like a power tool, some steel cased, heavy duty model with a ground plug and frayed wiring.
Being a discography, the sound quality varies wildly, but the rough edges only lend more menace to gut punches like “Dissection” or “Two by Four Crucifixion.” he band have also recorded one full length and a less than satisfying split with Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but the discography shows Apartment 213 at their rawest, a young band raging against the stultifying boredom of the Midwest. It’s enough to make someone go on a killing spree.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Asshole Parade

Asshole Parade
Say Goodbye
No Idea
2005
Where does power violence end and fastcore begin? Is there even a difference? Man is the Bastard gave us power violence, but Max Ward, who anchored some of the earliest practitioners of the sound, prefers the term fastcore. I generally lump Capitalist Casualties in with power violence (sorry, Max) while I can definitely see where the term fastcore would apply to someone like Threatener.
Philosophical maundering on the shoals of pointless semantics aside, Florida’s Asshole Parade refer to themselves as fastcore, but they can hold their own with just about any power violence band as well, perfecting that never stale adrenaline rush of punk tunes blasted at speeds just shy of a blast beat on Say Goodbye.
Attempting to break the four minute mile in punk form, Asshole Parade rarely cross the sixty second mark as they blast through pit starters like “Puncture the Quiet Life” and “Mr. Rippington’s Revenge.” Even the Circle Jerks classic “Red Tape” gets a nice and thorough beatdown, complete with harmonica solo and sublimely cynical Keith Morris sample.
Oh sure, in true power violence/fastcore fashion there’s the occasional swamp water sludge foray like the barely repressed violence of the ominously looming “Through tha (W)ringer,” but that’s just an early album respite, a deep breath before sprinting through the remaining songs.
Fastcore? Power violence? Whatever the fuck you wanna call it, Asshole Parade do it pretty fucking well.