G&P Review: Rehumanize

Rehumanize

Resident Apostasy

Open Grave

“To me, harmony means forgiving and embracing everybody, and I don’t want anyone to suffer anymore. And if the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering required to pay for the truth, I don’t want that truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price! And finally, I don’t really want to see the mother of the little boy embrace the man who set the hounds on him to tear him apart! She won’t be able to forgive him. If she wants to, she may forgive him for herself, for having caused her, the mother, infinite suffering. But she has no right to forgive him, even if the child chooses to forgive him himself. And if I am right, if they cannot forgive, what harmony can there be? Is there one single creature in the whole world who could forgive or would have the right to do so? No, I want no part of any harmony; I don’t want it, out of love for mankind. I prefer to remain with my unavenged suffering and my unappeased anger – even if I happen to be wrong. I feel, moreover, that such harmony is rather overpriced. We cannot afford to pay so much for a ticket. And so I hasten to return the ticket I’ve been sent. If I’m honest, it is my duty to return it as long as possible before the show. And that’s just what I’m trying to do, Alyosha. It isn’t that I reject God; I am simply returning Him most respectfully the ticket that would entitle me to a seat,” [Ivan Karamazov said.]

“That’s rebellion,” Alyosha said softly, lowering his eyes.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

1880

Despite – or maybe because of – his reactionary embrace of the Eastern Orthodox church, Fyodor Dostoevsky is the second greatest humanist to ever set pen to paper. (For those of you keeping score at home, Kurt Vonnegut is number one.) Dostoevsky was obsessed with the human condition, particularly the need for mankind to suffer. While his existentialist descendents would shrug off human misery as one more symptom of an indifferent, absurd universe, Dostoevsky’s solution was to embrace suffering, seek it out. Suffering was the penance paid in this life to reap God’s rewards in the next. He developed that religious fervor and obsession with suffering during his four year sentence to hard labor in Siberia for revolutionary activities. Staring down a firing squad will probably force you to drastically reconsider your life like that.

While they would likely approve of Dostoevsky’s devotion to God, band name aside, I’m pretty sure Rehumanize would consider his humanism to be another symptom of a fallen, sinful universe. That’s right, Rehumanize proselytize via grindcore for a stringent, inflexible, reactionary take on Christianity that revolts against megachurches (the relentlessly blasting “Supersized Megachruch”), the liberal left (“Moonbat Invasion”), porn (“Demise of the Adult Industry”) and … ummm … Unitarians (“Unitarian Universalist Ungodly,” which boasts a bass like the war trumpets of a righteously pissed Old Testament war god). Seriously, dude? Unitarians?

But here’s the thing, Resident Apostasy is a damn good album even if their theology makes me look over my shoulder for the Spanish Inquisition. But if I’m to be intellectually honest, myself, I’m forced to credit the honesty of their convictions as they rage against prosperity gospel hucksters Creflo Dollar (“Creflo $”) and Rick Warren (“Rick Warning”), an area, should they be willing, where they could make common cause with a New Atheist like me.

And theology aside, Resident Apostasy rages no matter which side you’ll take come Armageddon.

The guitars could use a tad more depth and definition, often whirling into a white sheet of noise on the faster songs but the galloping angel horde drums of “Psychopharmacologist” are spectacular. Ditto the doomridden “Planet Laodicea,” which drops the BPMs just enough to be ear candy without throttling all the way down to monotony. Album standout, the apocalyptic wrath of “La Ira de Dios se Manifesta,” cycles through the seventh seal of grind, hardcore and thrash.

Rehumanize are impressive because I’m pre-programmed to reflexively hate everything they stand for, but Resident Apostasy obliterated any objections I may have had, demanding repeated listens and forcing me to assess just how broadminded and honest I can be with myself. And my reward for that introspection is one of the most complete and well written albums of the year.

Going Dutch: Shapes of Misery

Shapes of Misery
Rise Above Oppression
I Hate Humanity
2008
I assume most of you are familiar with the reverse cowgirl, but Shapes of Misery bassist and I Hate Humanity Records proprietor Geert pulls a move on Rise Above Oppression I have dubbed the Reverse Newsted.
The guitars on Rise Above Oppression, the band’s sole full length to date, are laughably, tissue paper thin (“Something to Believe” foolishly gives the guitar its own space in a song to bathetic effect). However, the entire outing is saved from drowning in the suck swamp by Geert’s sledgehammer on songs like “Fire in Your Eyes,” a pyromaniacal blast that flares and snaps like a gas station going up.
Songwriting wise, Shapes of Misery are not altogether dissimilar to mid-era Phobia or even another grind collective that is also well acquainted with the morphology of discomfort. The band works the golden grind oldie of slow build tension and orgasmic blast release driven by thudding bass and stomping heart beat bass drumming.
While guitarist Glenn may want to savagely beat the album’s engineers, he does earn a spot in grindcore Valhalla as a vocalist who’s largely, surprisingly intelligible as he growls his ways through 27 slashes of traditional grind, including a cover of hometown heroes My Minds Mine’s “Drop Fascists Not Bombs” for good measure. In the hands of a competent producer, Rise Above Oppression could have been a ripper. Instead it’s a passable, enjoyable half an hour from a country that’s on the cusp of grindcore dominance.

Going Dutch: Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom

Scrotum Jus

2007

“Doom.”

And the word hangs dully in the air of the cell. It is a moment before Fury realises that he is being told a name. And even as he does … it is already too late.

Neil Gaiman

Marvel 1602

2003

I’m more of a Vertigo guy anyway, but I’ve always been a little vague on where Marvel’s fictional despotic principality of Latveria is actually supposed to be, but I really doubt the Dutch national character was the inspiration for one of comics’ most iconic villains. Those people are just too chill to get all wrapped up in the whole global domination trip.

Unlike the devious genius of the comic pages, this Dr. Doom, who previously shared a split with Collision, crushes with a death metal ponderousness and scattershot grindcore acceleration. This is Clandestine-era Entombed tunes pared down and given a hardcore work ethic for grind attention spans. Blue collar firebrand “Working Class Crusade” might be the only marriage of Bruce Springsteen’s earthy idealism and Repulsion’s danse macabre in the metal lexicon. The breakdown-laden “My Life as a Teenage Materialist” is a sly piss take on religion wrapped in inchoate, near-suicidal adolescent rebellion.” Keys to My Heart” rides the kind of hardcore knuckleduster like Trap Them or Black Ships routinely crank out.

Simple tunes cross-pollinated by hardcore and grind, Dr. Doom are not the flashiest of bands, but they’re solid and enjoyable and worth the occasional listen.

Going Dutch: D-Compose

D-Compose
Ancestral Inhuman Thoughtless
Extreme Terror
2004
Ancestral Inhuman Thoughtless is a slow burn of an album. D-Compose don’t really hit their stride until the latter half of this EP, which rocks the same pestilential low end that festers under Maruta. “Redemption” and “Kill Yourself Now” work the same blood splattered back alleys prowled by Crowpath with sludgey undertow riffs that suck you into a soup of filth and disease. “Redemption,” in particular, ends with the sound of a torture session that makes you question just how D-Compose expect you to be redeemed.
Unlike many of their hit it and quit it countrymen, these Holland-based multinational collective bring longer songs with an American hardcore vibe akin to Phobia’s Return to Desolation. While not as strong as that stone classic, D-Compose are not afraid to stretch grind’s attention-starved strictures in favor of lengthier tunes and quirky treatments like the almost industrial electro-beast stalking of “Maltreat Yourself” or Voivodian astral projection of “Insanity of Mankind,” which buzzes like nest of hornets with PMS. As a bonus, D-Compose throws in an almost unrecognizable deconstruction of the Ramones’ “I Am Not Jesus” that’s reassembled as a rolling death metal monstrosity that blends perfectly with D-Compose’s own corpus.
Ancestral Inhuman Thoughtless is by no means a perfect album. It’s plagued by a rather over-loud snare that goes at your temples like Woody Woodpecker on bathtub meth, for one thing, but even when they explode in their face, D-Compose’s experiments are consistently intriguing.

Going Dutch: F.U.B.A.R.

F.U.B.A.R.

Justification of Criminal Behaviour

Bones Brigade

2005

F.U.B.A.R. sound like pissed off (pissed on?) hornets clanging about in a soup pot while Scott Carlson rehearses in the garage next door. More brutal and direct than their countrymen, F.U.B.A.R. blast like a grindcore Man is the Bastard on 2005 album Justification of Criminal Behaviour. Prominent power violence influences and subterranean bass tones are the bulwark to F.U.B.A.R.’s sound on songs like “Behavior” and “Disappear.”

For all their Neanderthal proclivities, these Lascaux cavemen are also capable of staggering moments of beauty and clarity. The triumphant punk contours of “Buy This” mold themselves to a chassis of Converge-style stretch, particularly the You Fail Me-era Jacob Bannon yowling. Not every experiment is as successful thought. “Fucked Up Beyond 7C” is the kind of electronic pounding synth drone beat doom J. Randall stuffs around ANb songs. Seemingly reinterpreting a line from “Hate Filled Screens,” it pretty much brings what you’d expected for some studio frippery tacked on to the end of an album (read: nothing).

Easily ignored misstep aside, the bulk of Justification of Criminal Behaviour pitches to F.U.B.A.R.’s punk wheelhouse. A standout tune like “The National Fear Campaign 2004” hits all the classic punk and grind notes, ticking off the boxes next to driving, ragged guitars, howled vocal phrasings and slamming drum breaks. They’ve shared vinyl with Catheter (and are just as split-happy), which is actually a fairly good comparison point – a more power violence-fueled Preamble to Oblivion. Cliched but true: brutal.

Going Dutch: Collision

Collision
Roadkiller
Bones Brigade
2006

Unable to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of himself and takes care of it accordingly.

Sir James George Frazer
The Golden Bough
1922

Names have power, according to our primitive ancestors. If true, I’ve always thought the single most powerful name in all of hardcore or grind had to go to Boston’s Siege. It’s just an explosive monosyllabic burst that perfectly summarizes the mindset and power of the band. Just saying it invokes an impressive feat of linguistic legerdemain, with the seething sibilant of the S and the full stop affricative G. You’re practically forced to grit your teeth in rage as you say it.
With Siege as the Platonic ideal, I’d have to say Holland’s Collision come pretty damn close to achieving that same transcendence through nomenclature. Collision pretty must sums up not only the band’s body bomb assault on second album Roadkiller but also their musical pedigree, which rests securely at the nexus where grind sideswiped the circle pit punk that birthed it. Look no further than the band’s bull in a Faberge shop cover of Bad Brains’ “Attitude.”
Despite being Dutch, Collision have a singular focus on the excesses of American popular and political culture as they mercilessly mock our questionable subcultures (“Oh My Goth), our colorful peasant class (“Redneck Rampage”), our self help obsession (“Kill Phil”) and even our propensity for expecting bloated, aging action film stars to cleave our political morasses with the same ease with which they dispatched any number of low rent Columbian mercenaries (“Body Building Blowout”). Pop culture gets punk’d by a series of fluid punk beat to blast transitions, foam flecked gang vocals (“Drama Queen”), ominous building chug interludes and punk rock solos (“On the Loose to Reproduce”).
The only crack in Collision’s grind edifice would be the questionable dual vocalists. Bjorn and Wouter both bring an impressive pitbull bark, but their styles are so similar as to be redundant. But that’s a quibble against a backdrop of enjoyable punk madness.

Going Dutch: Blood I Bleed

Blood I Bleed

Gods Out of Monsters

Selfmadegod

2009

The blood this Dutch grind quartet bleeds is 75 percent identical to the sanguinary core of My Minds Mine. Reveling in a misanthropic disappointment with humanity’s failings, Blood I Bleed delivers battery acid-splashed grind and rotgut punk front with heartworm infested Rottweiler for a frontman. A new name and a drummer transfusion were all Blood I Bleed needed to vault themselves into their nation’s elite, particularly on face punching second album Gods Out of Monsters.

Shantia not only wrings rusted crust from his guitar but his plays his amp as an accompanying instrument as well, festooning “Insensible We Are,” “Pent up Rage” and “God Fear” with spangled garland of deliberate feedback like a Satanic Christmas tree. It’s a skill he’s mastered since his days in My Minds Mine. “Insensible We Are,” in particular is a highlight, immaculately manipulated feedback and a serpentine bass slither reenact the Garden of Eden fable in 30 second grindcore form. Bert’s bass has a vintage ’80s clunk to it, particularly on the cracked knuckled closer “Theorising Utopia,” and Henk smacks the drums with a substantial thump on the song’s inevitable blastbeat coda.

Gods Out of Monsters also rips a retrofitted DeLoreon ride through punk and grind history. “Scene Pool is Closed” nods back to crossover punk and “Bumper Sticker Analysis” condenses and repurposes the ever-spiraling central riff from Napalm Death’s “When All is Said and Done,” knocking off some altitude in favor of amped up rage. The band also brutalizes a cover of Enemy Soil’s “Lost,” which is a tightly compacted, contracted spiral against the rangy, random violence of Blood I Bleed’s own catalogue.

At a tight 18 minutes, Gods of Out Monsters is a ferocious, atheistic beast that pairs nicely with Attack of the Mad Axeman. Misanthropy rarely sounded so awesome.