Kaiju Big Mettal

Like a lot of guys my age whose childhoods revolved around dreary nowhere Midwestern towns, my formative Saturday afternoons often consisted of marathon sessions of Japanese dudes in rubber monster suits whaling on each other. Kaiju eiga were a staple of my childhood, and I've been binging on them lately after a good decade away. Watching the original,uncut Gojira (sans a drunken, condescending Raymond Burr) and Rodan (which is essentially a doom lovers' story), I was struck by just how grim, how metal those movies really were in context. The subtext was probably lost on me at 10, but, like me, plenty of heavy musicians have drawn inspiration from what, on the surface, were pretty ridiculous seeming popcorn flicks.
If you'll allow me to step away from grind and hardcore for a moment, I want to pay tribute to four monstrous sounding bands who also have a fondness for the King of All Monsters. It's like Kaiju Big Mettal.

Starting with the very first generation raised on rubber monsters, proto-metallers goofs Blue Oyster Cult went straight for the best of the beasts with "Godzilla."

Godzilla

When they weren't being all dour and gloomy and bummed out by Birmingham, industrial titans Godflesh sang the praises of peaceful lady creature "Mothra." Look for her to be stamped on tramps everywhere.

Mothra

Whales in space would make for a great kaiju flick on its own, but French metallions Gojira prove their titanic monster bonafides by going straight to the source, swiping their name from a more correct anglicazation of our beloved Godzilla.

Gojira

I'm just gonna straight to Wikipedia for this one because I can't make it sound more metal: "Gigan is a cybernetic monster sporting a buzzsaw weapon in its frontal abdominal region and large metallic hooks for hands. Gigan is considered Godzilla's most brutal and violent opponent, alongside Destroyah, both of which were easily able to severely injure Godzilla. Gigan was also the first monster in the Toho sci-fi series to cause Godzilla to visibly bleed."

Gigan

Now I'm totally in the mood to start a Halo- and Burmese-style bass and drums sludge band named Battra.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Week 3 Results/The 4-5 Matchups

I'm sorry to tell you all, but every single vote you've cast so far has been completely wasted. We're going to have to start over completely from the beginning because we all missed one guitarist who will run away with the whole competition. I don't know how we missed her in the beginning, but bow before your queen.


8-Year-Old Guitarist Makes Us All Look Bad - Watch More Funny Videos

While you sit there looking ashamed over your inability to remember the complex chord progression of "You Suffer," here's the 3-6 results.

The Old Guard
Gurn ran away with it, squashing Toshimi a perfect 10-0.

The Innovators
We're all going to infinity and beyond with space grinder Papirmollen, who edged out Talarczyk 7-5.

The Punks
No contest, Insect Warfare's Beau ran the table against Kill the Client's Richardson 12-0.

The Technicians
Another blowout with Erik Burke taking a 9-0 lead over the Creation is Crucifixion dudes.


So, we're moving on. As always you can check out the updated bracket here. Meanwhile, here's the last batch from round one, on to the 4-5s.

The Old Guard
4. Pintado (Terrorizer/Napalm Death/Resistant Culture) v. 5. Habelt (Siege)
Habelt had no clue he was inventing grindcore with Siege. Pintado helped perfect it over the next two decades.

The Innovators
4. Johnson (Enemy Soil/Drugs of Faith) v. 5. Borja (Maruta)
I've said this a lot, but Richardson has done a buttload to drag grind kicking and screaming into the future with drum machines and grindcore swing. Borja invented an instantly recognizable guitar tone that perfectly encapsulates grindcore's grizzly edge.

The Punks
4. Aalto (Rotten Sound) v. 5. Rasyid (Wormrot)
Finland and its Scandinavian kin represented the best grindcore had to offer during the first decade of the century. The next decade belongs to Southeast Asia. Who rules right now?

The Technicians
4. Rokicki (Antigama) v. 5. Arp (Psyopus)
I don't have the foundation in advanced chaos mathematics to keep up with either of these guitarists, but I recognize the insane talent involved.

As always, you've got until Sunday to make your best arguments.

Weekend Punk Pick: Blondie

One of punk's finest drummers wrapped up in one of New Wave's worst suits. Don't you dare talk shit about Blondie. Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein had sex in CBGB's infamously disgusting bathroom. That's way more punk than your shitty garage band's split 7-inch with Agathocles. Stein also had a unique finger picked style that you didn't see in any other punk band. In fact, Blondie was my soundtrack when the time came to sit down and actually write Compiling Autumn. Them and Adele. Go ahead, rip me to shreds.

You Grind...But Why?: Population Reduction

The time has come to wind this series down for at least a little bit, and I can think of no better way to send it in to the great beyond than with one of the smartest guys to ever play retarded metal.

Everybody's got "that album." That one that you blew off for a number of years but would eventually totally change the course of your musical life. Mine was Repulsion. I was completely late to the Horrified party, blowing it off as just another lame gore record (despite being all about Reek of Putrefaction, figure that one out). It was discovering "that album" that set Justin "Dr. X" Green on the true path of grind, culminating in thrashazoid weirdos Population Reduction.


"I got into grind from the death metal side of things as opposed to the punk side," Green said. "I had been into death metal for years and was looking for something different around 1997/1998, when death metal was starting to be all about ultra-technicality and sterility. My favorite death metal bands were more in the early Entombed/Autopsy vein, and I wasn't hearing that sound in the death metal scene anymore. I knew what I was looking for, but I didn't know what it was called- I even asked this one punk kid in my high school, 'Is there a death metal band that kinda plays like Helmet, with no solos and just riffs?', and he replied, 'I dunno... maybe Terrorizer?' I saw the CD at a record store but didn't buy it because Pete Sandoval's hair was too big on the back photo and I thought it was going to be Thrash. (!!) When I heard that Terrorizer record years later, I knew that was the exact sound that I'd been looking for. Stripped down, fast, tight, and with really catchy, memorable riffs. I still wonder how my life would have been different if I'd bought that record at age 16 instead of 22. I would have gotten into punk a lot sooner for sure. What I figured out years later was that my favorite death metal bands were the ones that had the most punk influences, so when I started listening to the more punk-influenced grind, everything just set into place for me.
"To me, grind is like death metal with all the fat trimmed off. It was kind of like taking the best parts (mosh parts, blast beats, thrash beats, d-beats) of my favorite death metal songs and putting them all in the same short song. When you're playing a 5-minute-plus death metal song, it's ok to have longer transitional passages or put in some filler-type riffs here or there, but with grind you have to get the most out of every riff in the shortest amount of time. Instead of writing one good riff and then thinking, 'Ok, I'll build the song around that', you have to think, 'Ok, I've got one good riff. Now I need about 3 more really awesome riffs and I'll start arranging the song.' Grind to me is 'more killer, less filler.'
"Also, when I started getting into grind and then crust I really appreciated the difference in lyrical content. I'd never really been 'politically active' but had a lot of very strong opinions about things, and was always really let down by the sexism and the posturing of the metal scene, and the sort of 'jock' attitudes and lack of intelligence that I saw. With grind and crust there were finally some bands that were saying things about the world I actually agreed with. When I read the lyrics to Dystopia's Human=Garbage record I knew I had found a scene with kindred spirits!
"In addition to playing drums, I also play guitar, but I'm not great. I can't solo and never have had any interest, which is probably why grindcore appealed to me so much. It's death metal played by punks! And everyone knows that punks don't take guitar lessons... so basically I realized I could continue to write grind riffs for all eternity with the fairly limited guitar vocabulary that I have, and that's what I've been doing."

Compiling Autumn: The Inalienable Book

This is why punctuation is important, people.

Remember that time I joked about writing a grindcore novel?
Yeah...
About that...
See, it's not so much a novel, per se, as it is the longest single piece of journalism I've ever written in either my professional or recreational wordsmithing career. Let me explain. Shortly after he gave me an exclusive sneak peak at Orphan, Jon Chang approached me with an idea. He wanted to tell as completely and comprehensively as possible the story of The Inalienable Dreamless. He envisioned it as the grindcore equivalent of the 33 1/3 series of books about great records. Having never bothered to read any of them, I just nodded and smiled and went ahead and wrote the story I wanted to tell in my own way.
Six months and a dozen interviews later, the result is Compiling Autumn: Making Discordance Axis' The Inalienable Dreamless, available for order at Create Space and Amazon.
So I need to publicly thank the guys for asking me to do this. It's probably my proudest moment as a blogger. Compiling Autumn is a loving 13,000 word encomium to my all-time favorite record by my all-time favorite band. (For comparison's sake, the longest interview/think piece I've ever written for the blog was a runty 1,300 words.) It represents half a year out of my life and includes interviews with every single member of Discordance Axis as well as The Inalienable Dreamless' engineer and Hydra Head's ownership. For additional context, I also sought out musicians who were influenced by the record and cultural tastemakers who could place the grindcore masterpiece in the proper context.
However, I will tell you straight up I do feel a bit conflicted charging $8 for this (which kinda goes against my intentions as a blogger). Especially since the final version is only about 36 pages (think of this is a bound version of one of those self-absorbed, navel gazing douchebag articles in some magazine like New Yorker only with blastbeats). Part of the reason it's so short is because the publisher just couldn't handle some of the bonus materials we gathered (but don't worry, we'll get to that start next week).
If it helps, though we're selling the book, neither Jon nor I will see a dollar from this. I thought this would just be a series of blog posts, but Jon graciously offered to pay for the printing costs and he's pledged all the proceeds to the Japanese Red Cross for the ongoing earthquake relief efforts. So while it may be expensive for something you could probably read in a single sitting, the money is going to a good cause. We will not be absconding and spending it on sexroids or something.
But as a show of good faith (and like the intellectual crack pusher that I am), I want to give you the first taste free.

Compiling Autumn Preview: The Old Ball and Chang

Compiling Autumn begins as Discordance Axis return from their Japanese tour in support of second album Jouhou. Guitarist Rob Marton had abruptly quit the band before the tour, precipitating a two-year hiatus that nearly derailed the band permanently. Itching to grind, drummer Dave Witte managed to corral and reconcile Marton with vocalist Jon Chang, but the working dynamic in the band had shifted in the intervening time. As they prepared to record The Inalienable Dreamless, Discordance Axis had to develop a new working relationship between the three members that would ultimately make the album what it was.


The Inalienable Dreamless is the sound of three strong personalities — the uncompromising visionary, the quiet technician, the speed demon —pulling together for a common goal in ways Discordance Axis had not been able to achieve previously. In many ways, it’s the sound of a band truly becoming a united force for the first time.
Where previously “Sgt. Chang” had been the band’s taskmaster and arbiter, deciding how the songs should go, dictating the lyrical and artistic direction and handling their releases – often without any input from his bandmates – The Inalienable Dreamless represents the fullest expression of Marton and Witte’s musical vision for the band. For the guitarist and drummer, it was no longer “Jon Chang’s Discordance Axis.”
“The earlier stuff, when we first started Discordance Axis, it was Jon Chang’s Discordance Axis," Marton said. "We never had a problem with that. It was his project. He kind of directed the whole thing. We were cool with that. We were there to have fun. But at some point it took over.”
Marton and Witte's new confidence meant Chang no longer dictated song structures or arrangement via spliced together bits of tapes from rehearsals. For much of Discordance Axis’ existence, Chang would direct the band’s sound by chopping up cassette recordings of rehearsals, piecing together riffs until he had songs that satisfied his criteria. As Witte and Marton grew as a musical unit, Chang was willing to relinquish some of the control, confident his bandmates had bought into the vision he had for what The Inalienable Dreamless would ultimately be.
“When we started the band it was my drive and my money and my contacts and everything was me pushing that thing forward,” Chang said. “When Rob said it was my project, he was right. It was literally me ordering things. It was me saying, ‘I demand this. We need to play this fast. We need to have this structure.’ And being really tyrannical about it, honestly. I did that because I had a vision of what we could be. We weren’t going to get there unless we went through a lot of things to be there. By the time Jouhou was done, I felt we were there. Whatever was going to come next, I trusted the guys to understand it and accept the vision. It was a common goal of everybody to make music like this. I pushed everybody in Discordance and it was one of the reasons it was a stressful band. That stuff hasn’t changed.”
The Inalienable Dreamless, Chang said, demonstrated a band pushing for and achieving that desperate need for perfection.
“After we wrote that record I felt like I was a different person,” he said. “It really was what I was trying to get with for a lot of years.”
The songs that would become The Inalienable Dreamless were hashed out by Marton, who had been writing throughout the band’s hiatus, and Witte during weekend rehearsals. The two musicians would refine the songs for two or three hours before Chang joined them for the final hour of practice to offer his thoughts.
“I think he let us create more and there wasn’t any splicing," Marton said. "There was ‘maybe we could lengthen this part and maybe put this part before this part’ instead of just him splicing a tape. The whole process was different. That sort of thing just really wasn’t necessary at that point. There was a bit of ‘I’m going to do what I think sounds good’ and it’s going make it or not. Before we were writing fast, we were having fun, but it was more of a ‘Jon will like this, so let’s do this.’ We wanted to write grind. We wanted to be fast. We wanted to be in your face. We were trying to find out how to do it.”

G&P Review: Slaughter Slashing

Slaughter Slashing
Akasha?
Guilty Parade
You could spend half an hour listening to Akasha? or you could just randomly twirl your radio tuner and get the same effect much quicker. Quebecois noisers Slaughter Slashing seem to conflate randomness with originality over eight songs that sacrifice niceties like coherence or listener enjoyment in pursuit of their every-genre-at-once intentions. I can't imagine Slaughter Slashing's target audience, but I'm pretty sure either the band or their fans will be on some heavy-grade prescription mood medication.
There are flashes of traditional metal bordering on grind lurking underneath Slaughter Slashing's Mr. Bungle-oid, everything-but-the-synthesized-kitchen-sink self indulgence. However, knowing my audience, that won't be nearly enough to hold your attention once the intrusive horns and other stylistic detritus start getting heaped on top. Rather than being content at being really good at one thing, Slaughter Slashing instead dabble halfheartedly in half a dozen. There are flashes that they know what they're about, such as the thundering, moody horn opening of "Bastian's Challenge," but 48 seconds into a 3:22 song it becomes a bloated, sagging mass of competing styles as blastbeats and bad jazz war for supremacy. The cool Creation is Crucifixion guitars of "Tommy Goes to Memphis (The Chronicles Part 1)," Akasha?'s first true song, get buried mercilessly under more flatulent horns.
And that's, ultimately, Akasha?'s undoing because as soon as you find one element you can latch on to, it gets obliterated by funk bass, twitchy electronics or horn lines stolen from Kenny G's yard sale. It's one novelty piled on top of another. Nothing gets integrated. Nothing coheres. And every time I listened to the album, it just became worse and more distracting. Akasha may be Sanskrit for aether, but I think Slaughter Slashing are just blowing smoke.

[Full disclosure: Slaughter Slashing sent me a review copy.]