G&P Review: Resistant Culture

Resistant Culture
All One Struggle
Seventh Generation
It’s good to know your strengths. Case in point, Resistant Culture specialize in tribally bolstered crust grind. Nowhere in there would you read the members boasting any particular marketing acumen. Turns out the band quietly released their second long player, All One Struggle, (third if you count 2003’s Ancient Culture, put out under the name Resistant) back in October but never bothered to tell anyone until ads started popping up in your favorite metal glossies recently for their impending tour with Hellbastard. But all that really amounts to me bitching about them being too DIY and not conforming to today’s overly commercial metal scene – like that’s a bad thing.
With All One Struggle Resistant Culture focus more on their crust and punk influences than on grind-inflected that characterized Welcome to Reality, one of Jesse Pintado’s final recordings. Remaining guitarist Katina steamrolls any notion that Pintado’s absence represents a setback for the band within the opening 20 seconds, filigreeing a guitar whorl within the first bars of “Beneath the Concrete” before laying into the jackhammer tone that dominates All One Struggle.
In the band’s trademark use of sampled tribal chants and native instruments is back on display with greater (“Beneath the Concrete”) and lesser (“Mending the Hoop”) degrees of success. Resistant Culture also forage new territory on All One Struggle with the Amebix-ized Moonspell goth gloom of “Runaway.”
The only knock I can lay on the album is with Tony Rezhawk. The guy could give postgraduate grind seminars on balancing power and clarity in your vocal performance. Lyrically, the same themes of environmental stewardship and tribal autonomy get another once over, but All One Struggle largely lacks the kind of singalong hooks that made Welcome to Reality stand out. That aside, Resistant Culture further refine their unique attack on All One Struggle, but the man's passion for native causes remains as focused and powerful as ever. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to dig out some back issues of Jason Aaron’s Scalped.