tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84231759704397807642024-03-12T19:43:58.091-04:00Grind and PunishmentStill not loud enough; Still not fast enough.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.comBlogger880125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-23088282207626112032014-11-25T21:14:00.002-05:002014-11-25T21:14:40.261-05:00Burn it Down: The Arson Project Believe in Slow Cooking Their Grind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20arson%20project">The Arson Project</a> seemed poised on the cusp of something spectacular in 2008 when they dropped their incendiary debut EP <i>Blood and Locusts</i>. The Swedes combined the best of their homegrown grindcraft with maybe a hint of North American punk bellicosity into 10 songs and 14 minutes of rampaging snarl.<br />The strength of <i>Blood and Locust</i> earned The Arson Project a split 7-inch on Relapse with critical darlings Noisear and an invitation to play Maryland Deathfest in 2008 (which they had to miss). But since then, the band has been quiet – a handful of tours through Europe and Asia but no new music. That’s about to change as The Arson Project ready their debut LP, which will hopefully ignite their phoenix-like resurgence to Scandinavian grind upstarts.<br />Here’s hoping this attempt goes better than the band’s first pass at recording a long player.<br />“In 2010 TAP was still only about touring and to stress out a debut full length wouldn’t have been something which we would have liked to put our names on. We tried it once in 2007 and it ended up with putting all the songs in the bin and starting from the beginning and that’s when we wrote <i>Blood and Locusts</i>,” vocalist and founding member Niklas Larson said. “In contrast with the MCD, we didn’t have enough time when we wrote the songs for the split, and we're not at all happy with the way the songs turned out. But we learned a lot by doing it, so we will without any doubts never release anything by deadline again. TAP songs only come when the inspiration is there.”<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YKEBGIvXmMU" width="540"></iframe><br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Fire Walk With Me.</b></span><br />
<br />Patience seems to be a defining theme for The Arson Project. Getting their start in tiny Oskarshamn on Sweden’s southeast coast – poised nearly equidistant between Stockholm and Copenhagen – the band has never tried to force themselves beyond their comfort points, even if that means letting half a decade slide between releases or watching trends swirl around them.<br />“This band is my life. I have spent thousands of hours on the road, in our different rehearsal places and on shitty jobs just to afford going on tour or to record like five to six minutes in the studio,” Larson said. “Even though we haven’t been that active the past years, this band reminds me every day that it has made me discover so many great things which have affected me as a person. It doesn’t matter if we play a show every ten years or release albums every twenty. It's not only about being seen everywhere; it's more about not living an ordinary boring life with full time jobs, debts and lots of shit you don’t need. As long as the band exists, it lets me be who I am.”<br />After years of being spread around Sweden, the majority of The Arson Project is now headquartered in Malmö, which should jolt their productivity as 75 percent of the members are able to physically assemble to prepare new music several times a week. Larson in 2010 even quit his job to make The Arson Project a priority. He’s been chauffeuring other metal and punk bands around Europe the last few years since his own group has been temporarily sidelined from touring.<br />Larson is cautiously optimistic that The Arson Project’s upcoming album will be the band’s ticket to hit the road and see the world. Until then, it’s just a matter of deciding how they will deliver the new album to the masses once the quartet is satisfied. True to their hardcore punk roots, The Arson Project are considering handling the release in-house.<br />“We have many contacts and we already know a bunch of labels that are interested to put out TAP releases. But with the things we've been through in mind, we won’t give the recordings or promises to anyone before we're satisfied with the finished result,” Larson said. “We've already had discussions about releasing it ourselves as well, and it's something which I'm finding more and more as an attractive option. I don't care about being associated with respected labels at all. My only concern is that the people who want to get their hands on the vinyl should be able to find it easily without paying shitloads of money.”Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-89222120556753516562014-11-12T21:28:00.001-05:002014-11-12T21:28:38.358-05:00G&P Review: Body Hammer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="http://thepathlesstraveledrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ii-the-mechanism-of-night">Body Hammer</a><br /><i>II: The Mechanism of Night</i><br /><a href="http://thepathlesstraveledrecords.com/">The Path Less Traveled</a></b><br />Books and films revel in trilogies because the story follows the accustomed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-act_structure">three-act structure</a>. The first stage introduces the characters and sets them on the road to the second act in which they confront the antagonists and finally the resolution where all of the narrative threads are brought to a close. The second act will likely feature some of the best drama and action as the protagonist grapples with seemingly unbeatable odds, but by the same token it also can be the most unsatisfying phase of a story because there’s no resolution. That’s why the ending of <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> sucks so much (that’s right I said it; it needed to be said).<br />Music is not particularly strong on narrative so these topics don’t come up often, but it makes a handy conceptual framework for appreciating <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/body%20hammer">Body Hammer</a>’s second album, <i>II: The Mechanism of Night</i>, after one-man nightmare master Ryan Page revealed it’s the second installment in a planned trilogy based on Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy</i>. Prior album,<i> Jigoku</i>, Virgiled us through hell as the songs were slowly eviscerated from electronic grind nightmares to free form, more abstract meditations on sin and punishment. <br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1636790485/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://thepathlesstraveledrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ii-the-mechanism-of-night">II: The Mechanism of Night by Body Hammer</a></iframe><br /><br />With <i>The Mechanism of Night</i>, the journey into purgatory is far more fitful and fraught. “The Iron Bough” sets the penitent tone from the outset with a flagellating wave of percussion, but unlike its predecessor, <i>The Mechanism of Night</i> gives play to full on grind catharsis. In fact the grind elements are sparse and widely spread out between tidal bashings of electronic waves of suffering and atonement. So that will be the first obstacle for the casual grind fiend looking for a quick blastbeat fix.<br />The second pitfall is inherent in the very nature of three-part story structure: the middle act is often the least satisfying entry on its own merits. But the nature of narrative, the second act ends with no resolution. Instead, our protagonists are usually left at the mercy of their foes, the promise of victory is still obscured by future obstacles. <i>The Mechanism of Night</i> has a similar shortcoming in that it works best when paired with its predecessor – elements of “Body Blockade” and “Clawing at the Skin of God” nod back to themes and execution of Jigoku’s “The Bystander Effect.” <i>The Mechanism of Night</i>’s best elements are those that build toward tension but fail to release into catharsis such as the coven incantations of “A Presence” or the penultimate nihilistic hellscape “A Foregone Conclusion.” Where<i> Jigoku</i>’s primary musical tendency was from tightly wound chaos to bleeding out into noise, <i>The Mechanism of Night</i> is more sporadic and halting as it lurches from grind to noise. <br /> In the context of Dante’s controlling metaphor of a journey from Hell to Purgatory and ultimately up the mountain toward Paradise, it makes sense. But there’s probably a pretty good argument to be made that having to know all of that context in advance to enjoy a piece of music indicates a failure of execution, but once the connection is made the intention becomes clearer and the journey is rewarding, even if lacks resolution. To be continued.<br /><br /><i>[Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-13349892084935475032014-10-28T21:08:00.001-04:002014-10-28T21:08:22.262-04:00Three’s Company: Reconfigured and Reinvigorated Backslider Are All About That Bass, Motherfucker<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Photo by Suren Karapetyan</i></td></tr>
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<i>Sorry, two's company, and three's an adult movie.</i><br />John Turturro in <i>Brain Donors</i>, 1992<br /><br />Philadelphia grind-violence dervish duo <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/backslider">Backslider</a> has brewed an exquisitely nasty racket since 2008 with the bare necessities of drums, guitar and throat-rending shrieks. And guitarist Logan and drummer Patrick were content. Early failed experiments in adding a third wheel only cemented the twosome’s desire to keep things concise. Anybody who braved the glass shard maelstrom of their audio assault would be hard pressed to argue otherwise.<br />Backslider could have continued cranking out immaculate music based on the binary concept and we all would have applauded slack jawed (just as soon as we recovered from the concussions they inflicted). But earlier this year Backslider unexpectedly rounded out their assault by bringing in bassist Jake. <br />“At first we were pretty much not willing budge on the topic. Jake was pretty persistent,” Patrick said. “I lived in Florida for a year in 06-07 and met Jake during that time. He's been in tons of bands, toured and recorded a bunch so he's no rookie. I can remember seeing him at a show before he joined in Philly, and him asking about it. I remember explaining to him that we were so used to operating as a two piece, it was more of an issue of that than anything and I had no doubt he could do it, but we would just jam and see how it went. Jake is a capable and great bass player so I knew he could do it no problem. After a few practices we caved.”<br />Jake was even more dogged about earning a seat in Backslider’s van after he heard the impressive <i>Consequences</i> album.<br />“I feel like at that point Patrick and I felt like it was time to branch out and start taking things more seriously,” Logan said. “We had a couple jams with him and it went really well. He's been doing this shit for years and he's no weakling.”<br />With <i>Consequences</i>, Backslider had broadened their repertoire, breaking up the speed freak brutality to repeatedly whack you upside the head with a sock full of Sacajawea dollars, taking their time to savor your pleas for mercy.<br />“I distinctly remember a conversation that Patrick and I had a couple of years ago, around the time that we were writing for the Nimbus Terrifix split 7-inch, that we decided we don't need boundaries and if we wanted to play fast, we were gonna play fast as fuck, but also if we wanted to play slow, we were gonna do that as well,” Logan said. “Since then, we've opened ourselves up to many different styles, and I think that we're better musicians now than we've ever been. It's more satisfying and fun, the world doesn't need any more 'powerviolence' clones.”<br />In that same spirit of no frontiers and no fucks given, adding Jake to the roster has also allowed Backslider to stretch their musical muscles and explore tones and timbres previously untested.<br />“As far as writing, his involvement and ideas have really opened things up for us, we're able to do things that we've never even thought to try before, and it sounds pretty unreal,” Patrick said. “The heaviness is more pronounced and the range of tones we're able to get balances out the sound, so much so that I wish we would've had a competent bassist all along.”<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Maladapted Motherfuckers.</b></span><br /><br />Backslider’s new configuration will get its first in your face work out soon once the newly minted trio puts the final touches on the upcoming album <i>Motherfucker</i>.<br />“As of right now we're about 75 percent finished with writing for the LP, it's going to be called <i>Motherfucker</i> and it's going to be just that,” Logan enthused. “There are a lot of things going on in these songs that are completely uncharted territory for us and they seem more like actual songs that move and grow as opposed to fastcore farts. There's still plenty of blazing fast hardcore but the arrangements are more prolonged and abstract. I don't recall a lot of the writing process for any of our records, except for the heated arguments during the <i>Consequences</i> practices. I can say that, for me at least, this is the most fun it's been to write for Backslider.” <br />After some personal and intraband turmoil leading up to <i>Consequences</i>, Patrick also said Motherfucker sees Backslider at their most focused. Not only has adding Jake rounded out the band’s sound, but his voice in the practice space is also pushing Backslider to be their best, the drummer said.<br />“I just put together a ‘discography so far’ of all of our material, and I like all of it. But, I think what we've got coming is crushing it all,” Patrick said. “Yeah, the <i>Consequences</i> writing period was a rough spot for us. We were busy as a band and also had a lot going on personally at the time too. It was our first longer release and we beat the crap out of ourselves getting it together. We were satisfied with the result. I think not only having a bass to pull the low end together but, having a third voice and opinion also is refreshing for us. The writing process has been fun so far, and coming together really well.”Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-631085347153560242014-10-21T21:21:00.001-04:002014-10-21T21:21:52.233-04:00G&P Review: Kaiju Daisenso<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://kaijudaisenso.bandcamp.com/">Kaiju Daisenso</a><br /><i>Kaiju Daisenso</i><br />Tokyo Fist</b><br />The writers of the upcoming<i> Godzilla</i> and <i>Pacific Rim</i> sequels should sit down and take notes after a few spins of New York megafauna Kaiju Daisenso’s rubble shaking record: get straight to the fucking monsters. Nobody drops a 10-spot at the local cinema to listen to a bunch of whiny humans blather on. We’re there for the hot monster-on-monster action, so don’t fuck around and get right to the carnage.<br />It’s a lesson Kaiju Daisenso, featuring former members of <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/unearthly%20trance">Unearthly Trance</a>, Serpentine Path and Helen of Troy, have indelibly seared into their souls with atomic breath. Their self-titled EP is a Rodan divebomb of no-bullshit, Ghidorah groaning grind. At 10 tracks (including a couple brief scene-setter pieces), Kaiju Daisenso lasts about as long as the <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/09/8-minute-godzilla/">King of the Monster’s screen time in the latest Hollywood reboot</a>. But unlike the film, Kaiju Daisenso don’t pad it out with a bunch of bullshit nobody wants to see, so you’ll definitely be coming back for more.<br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=33764988/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://kaijudaisenso.bandcamp.com/album/kaiju-daisenso">Kaiju Daisenso by Kaiju Daisenso</a></iframe><br /><br />Their EP may be short, but Kaiju Daisenso wring every monster moment out of every second with a master’s class in economical composition that honors just about every incarnation of Godzilla and friends from the horrific to the goofy (Just not <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Godzuki">Godzuki</a> goofy. We all have our limits.). Just as they settle into a sweet grind groove, Kaiju Daisenso close out the EP’s first side with the UFO warble of “Hedorah Attack.” Flipping the record finds one of the many Mothra songs repurposed as a side two intro in “Infant Island Blues” before being nuked away by the major chord chaos of a rampant Godzilla on “Atomic Breath.”<br />I may have mentioned my love of kaiju eiga a <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2012/02/kaiju-big-mettal.html">time</a> or <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2012/06/namesake-series-mothra.html">two</a> before, and Kaiju Daisenso hit that perfectly sweet spot between the campy rubber suited matinees of my childhood and the visceral darkness of the original <i>Gojira</i>. The only thing holding the EP back from perfection may be a bit of mud clinging to the guitars that blurs the riffing, but it’s the pickiest of nits because Kaiju Daisenso will lay your inner Tokyo to waste.<br /><br />Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-88062191223558394192014-10-14T20:28:00.001-04:002014-10-14T20:28:26.328-04:00The Seventh Seal<br />
<i>And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.<br />And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets.<br />And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer [it] with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.<br />And the smoke of the incense, [which came] with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand.<br />And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast [it] into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake.</i><br /><br /><b>Revelation 8:1-5</b><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/SFLVSxc8nVA" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Happy seventh blogaversary, G&P.<br />Like Barry Bonds and Mark Maguire’s homerun records, this blogaversary will always come with an asterisk (unfortunately not that <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/asterisk">Asterisk*</a>) next to it since I basically took half a year and just fucked off. And since I’ve decided to give this yet another go, no one could accuse me of being prolific. But G&P keeps creeping along as I find the time between work, family and a toddler who seems to have skipped a grade and jumped straight to the terrible twos and then taken up permanent residence there. While I don’t have the time or energy to bang out three or four posts a week like I used to (at this point three or four a month would be a triumph), I still have this weird urge to scribble the words about the grind and send them out to the interhole in the hopes of reaching likeminded mutants who have this insatiable need to grind and the analytical compulsion to take the music apart, poke around in its innards and figure out how it all works. Setting out to write the greatest grind blog on the internet is a bit like aspiring to be the tallest guy in Munchkinland, but that’s my dream and fuck it I’ll give it a shot.<br />I’m genuinely grateful that you guys have stuck around despite all the ups and downs and long silences lately. I hope never to lose appreciation for the fact that all of you take time out to stop by to talk about this stuff with me. It’s a privilege to find a community that shares my interests and has provided me the support and feedback necessary to keep going. So, as always, thank you to all of you. I really do appreciate it all.<br />So hopefully things can pick up a bit in the next year. I’m balls deep in my next in-depth project story (and it’s slowly kicking my ass) and I have a couple of interviews up my sleeve coming in the not too distant future (i.e. between now and the inevitable heat death of the universe). Mostly I hope I can keep finding new ways to look at grind that spark my interest and hopefully yours too. I’ll keep plugging away at G&P as long as I can find the time and energy because the interest is there on my part and hopefully yours too. I’ll write some more just as soon as I beat this pasty guy in chess. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg-IG7V5eZg">Or maybe Battleship</a>.<br />
<br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dRTsNn5EU0M/VD2-5WcpKzI/AAAAAAAADuY/kqY1If3OaQE/s1600/seventhseal.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dRTsNn5EU0M/VD2-5WcpKzI/AAAAAAAADuY/kqY1If3OaQE/s1600/seventhseal.jpg" height="299" width="400" /></a>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-10410178699619360272014-09-23T21:52:00.004-04:002014-09-24T20:51:29.415-04:00 Mimetic: Attack of the Discordance Axis ClonesIf <i>The Inalienable Dreamles</i>s were a child, it would be old enough to start high school this year. <br />
In the nearly decade and a half since <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/discordance%20axis">Discordance Axis</a> gifted the world a masterpiece and then summarily retired, the New Jersey trio has gone from that band that few had heard of and even fewer liked to a significant touchstone in grindcore. A whole generation of grind musicians has grown up with Dave Witte’s tendon-testing speed, Jon Chang’s upper register screech and pop cultural fixations and particularly Rob Marton’s uniquely phrased guitar parts as part of the musical heritage they have inherited. That influence is coming to fruition as a recent of wave of Discordance Axis clones.<br />
“I think that we identified with Discordance Axis because they're different from other grindcore bands,” said Jonathan Thompson, whose band, Vertigo Index, cribbed both their name and style from one of <i>Jouhou</i>’s songs. “Despite the fact that they do adhere in some sense to the sort of the grindcore blast-heavy template, they really managed to do so in a way that was forward thinking. Rather than rehashing the bands that came before them, they took their ideas and morphed them into something that was wholly their own. That is, they were able to write short fast songs that still feel like songs rather than simply bursts of aggression. Their song writing skills, specifically on <i>The Inalienable Dreamless</i>, are unparalleled in grindcore. While the songs are still ferocious in their own right they contain more interesting tonal characteristics than the simpler fast power chords and blast beats of their contemporaries.” <br />
But for Discordance Axis, after years of being marginalized, seeing other bands adapt their sonic template is a bizarre reversal.<br />
“I have always found it surreal that DA has any kind of following today given how completely people were disinterested with us when we existed,” Chang said. “It seems like the music has influenced people in the form of bands, individuals or other artists who have nothing to do with music.”<br />
Cloning is intrinsic to musical evolution. Nobody would be grinding now if it weren’t for shamelessly ripping off Siege, Napalm Death and Repulsion. Hell, Carcass has been cloned more times than a Mandalorian bounty hunter. Indeed, Discordance Axis’ first album, <i>Ulterior</i>, owed a significant and obvious debt to <i>From Enslavement to Obliteration</i>.<br />
“In the case of clones or cover bands, I hope those people are getting their sea legs and working to eclipse what we did. I know when we started we were very influenced by the <i>Scum</i>, SOB-split era of Napalm Death, SOB, Assuck and Anal Cunt, but we found our own voice in time,” Chang said.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Punctuation.</b></span><br />
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One of the first bands to embrace and internalize the Discordance Axis aesthetic was Sweden’s <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/asterisk">Asterisk*</a> who mimicked the Jersey grinders in service of songs about literature, philosophy and linguistics. They even took the step of seeking out Chang to do the art for their 2003 compilation album <i>Dogma</i>. Chang, who had never heard the band, said he didn’t even realize that his band had influenced the Swedish trio until years later.<br />
“I don't think I heard the CD till years later and was surprised how clearly into DA they were,” Chang said.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Sentenced.</b></span><br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1421078645/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=1182165037/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://theevacuationplan.bandcamp.com/album/corridos-grind">Corridos Grind by Syntax</a></iframe><br />
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Moses Cuellar believes that <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/syntax">Syntax</a> has grown beyond simply aping Discordance Axis as his band has matured over the last couple of years. However, he’s not shy about admitted the debt he owes that band.<br />
“DA influenced me because I find their music relative,” he said. “It is lyrically and musically unconventional, stimulating, challenging, thought-provoking, tragic yet fun, personal and real. Above all, their estrangement from their contemporaries is something I can relate to on a musical and personal level.”<br />
Syntax’s first few demos leaned heavily on the Discordance Axis playbook, but Cuellar is still penning encomiums to the New Jersey trio, particularly Chang’s unique lyrical bent.<br />
“I like to think that I have expanded much since those days because I have begun building an individualistic sense of writing, but they are definitely a part of the basis that is my songwriting process/mindset. But, sometimes I do have to go back and check to make sure they haven't done it already,” he said. “Our releases after 2009 stray from it more as time goes on, but their influence is very much present. I wrote a song about it too. In efforts to pay homage to them and Mortalized, the song ‘Radiation Pulse,’ on our <i>Corridos Grind</i> tape is solely dedicated to them.”<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Dizziness.</b></span><br />
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<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3212500245/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://vertigoindex.bandcamp.com/album/posthuman-v11">Posthuman v1.1 by Vertigo Index</a></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/vertigo%20index">Vertigo Index</a> do not make much of a secret their infatuation with Discordance Axis. It’s right there in the name. But guitarist Jonathan Thompson said Discordance Axis is only meant to be a launching point for something hopefully more unique and personal.<br />
“I think the decision to use what they did as a means to forge our own style is in part an attempt to take a style of grindcore, under-represented by my estimations, and attempt to further it somewhat,” Thompson said. “I guess the Discordance Axis playbook is appealing because they managed to leave a lot of room for interesting song writing while still adhering to a sound that is distinctly grindcore. Basically we can wear that influence on our sleeve and still manage to not directly rip off what they were doing. I guess it's a lot like the composers during the various movements of classical music paying homage to one another.”<br />
For Johnson, Discordance Axis’ posthumous fame is just a matter of a superior band finally getting its due. In a world where out of print and obscurity have largely lost their meaning, it was only a matter of time before Discordance Axis latched on to the audience they sought all along.<br />
“I think that now a band like Discordance Axis would be received a lot better due to the increased ability for people to communicate with other like-minded individuals whereas they were limited to true word of mouth and paper fanzines when they were a band,” Johnson said. “I also think that part of what has contributed to their increasing influence is the word of mouth for years after the broke up. They did something special; that really isn't up for debate. When you as a band manage to do something like that people will notice. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes years for people to come around to this fact.”<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Ripped.</b></span><br />
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When he’s not marrying Gorguts to grindcore in <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/maruta">Maruta</a>, guitarist and bassist Mauro Cardoba worships at the altar of Rob Marton. Naming his side project DARO for Discordance Axis Rip Off is a bit on the nose, but he’s considering yet another Discordance Axis homage as a band name.<br />
“At first I wasn't too sure what to call it so DARO seemed OK,” Cordoba said. “It’s almost Japanese sounding. I'd love to call it Jigsaw. It's my favorite song by them, but I have a feeling it’s probably taken already.”<br />
Stepping aside from the Maruta template allowed Cardoba a chance to broaden his musical repertoire and work out a few issues in the process. Working with Hungarian drummer Balazs he’s recorded a few demo tracks.<br />
“I went through a brief Jon Chang period in my life in 2011 and wanted to write some songs (not for Maruta) ’cause I had some feelings I needed to get out,” Cardoba said. “I figured doing DA type stuff would be fun and it wasn't a common thing then. I even went as far as asking friends if they knew any bands in that style because the only one I knew of at the time was Asterisk, thanks to your blog. In this type of music, whether you call it grind, punk or whatever, for the most part it’s totally cool to rip off bigger, better bands. Also, sometimes it’s cool to give yourself constraints, and sounding like DA is an especially weird constraint just because they were so different.”<br />
While the writing and recording process has been slow, Cardoba envisions putting his side project’s songs to tape the next time Balazs hits the United States. <br />
“The plan is to record the songs properly as soon as he comes back to the states and then put out a seven inch,” Cardoba said. <br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>Boners.</b></span><br />
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<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/priapus">Priapus</a> are more likely to be tagged as Maruta clones by reductive assholes on the internet (not naming names *cough*), but it’s Discordance Axis that provides the secret sauce in their songwriting guitarist Jeremy Shaffer said.<br />
“DA is one of my favorite bands, and <i>The Inalienable Dreamless</i> is probably my favorite heavy record ever released,” he said. “It's this blend of technicality and raw aggression that is rarely done well, with most bands nailing one of those and completely missing the other. There's also this incredible sense of songwriting and dynamics that most grindcore lacks - for example, the way the end of ‘Jigsaw’ winds down, then builds back up and comes riiiiight to the edge of exploding before just abruptly stopping dead. Amazing!”<br />
The song’s strong sense of dynamics and aggression became a key touchstone for Priapus as they set out to write their own music. Priapus doesn’t have a lot of musical overlap with Discordance Axis, there’s a commonality in musical philosophy. Discordance Axis also convinced Shaffer that adding a bass player to the band would just be a waste of a seat in the tour van.<br />
<i>The Inalienable Dreamless’</i> groundbreaking and unique sonic palette cemented Discordance Axis’ legendary status in Shaffer’s mind, even if it took much of the musical world more than a decade to catch on.<br />
“They just hit all the right marks for being a legendary/highly influential band – conceptually consistent, a strong sense of identity, unique lyrical concepts, and powerful songs that are simple enough to grab the listener immediately, but rich enough in layers and texture to be rewarding on listen number 1,000,” Shaffer said. “Regardless of genre (or even medium), any work that can do those things will usually be recognized for what it is, even if it takes years to come to the surface.”<br />
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<br />
<span style="color: red;"><b>Annihilation.</b></span><br />
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<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/noisear">Noisear</a> have always had a strong strain of Discordance Axis in their chaotic, technical whatsis-core sound. Their status as inheritors of Discordance Axis’ musical traditional was cemented when they were invited to contribute a cover of “Mimetic” for <i>Our Last Day</i>, Discordance Axis’ final album-cum-tribute record. “Mimetic” and another five Discordance Axis covers also appeared on <i>Pyroclastic Annhiallation</i>.<br />
“Discordance Axis was the most influential band next to Napalm Death’s original lineup and one of the reasons I was able to develop a unique style and implement that into all the groups I have been a part of throughout the years,” guitarist Dorian Rainwater said. “I think the best way to put it would be the fact that over a decade ago when bands were doing pretty much the same formula and all jumping on the same bandwagon in terms of extreme metal, DA was breaking that barrier and using unorthodox methods of combining dissonant diminished guitar riffs over dizzying time signatures and single foot blast beats. Also Rob was never afraid to break the norm of traditional guitar playing. He made motifs out of feedback, harmonics, pick scratches and string noise while still applying complex syncopated technical phrases, melody and off kilter chord progressions. They took all the elements of grindcore from the earliest era and churned them with their own style of artsy nightmare soundscapes, some of which to this day give me the feeling of impending doom, panic, suspense and terror.”Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-30096835900519091162014-09-03T21:19:00.000-04:002014-09-03T21:19:07.539-04:00G&P Review: Keitzer<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KffEsNiiNvc/VAe9zmEnhvI/AAAAAAAADuA/ba4rNAPH7C4/s1600/keitzer.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><i>You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.</i><br /><b>Matthew 24:6</b><br /><br /><b><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KffEsNiiNvc/VAe9zmEnhvI/AAAAAAAADuA/ba4rNAPH7C4/s1600/keitzer.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KffEsNiiNvc/VAe9zmEnhvI/AAAAAAAADuA/ba4rNAPH7C4/s1600/keitzer.png" height="318" width="320" /></a><a href="https://www.facebook.com/keitzer">Keitzer </a><br /><i>The Last Defence</i><br /><a href="http://www.fda-rekotz.com/">FDA Rekotz</a></b><br />A Midwestern town is in flames after cops dolled up in surplus military gear stormed out in force to put down protests after an unarmed black kid was shot by the police. America is easing its way into yet another war in the Middle East with an incremental build up that should make anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of Vietnam queasy. Israel and Gaza’s millennia-old internecine squabble is on again. Russia seems to be determined to reunite the old Soviet Union with Ukraine being first on the agenda.<br />It’s a fraught and violent time. <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/keitzer">Keitzer</a>’s latest, <i>The Last Defence</i>, is a fraught and violent record that reflects its era. It may just be fortuitous (if that’s really the word) timing, but the downer news cycle synchs up perfectly with the Germans’ latest missive of relentless, bellicose negativity. <i>The Last Defence</i> is a single-minded beast that moves with the implacability of armored battalions cresting a battlefield. Every song rumbles along with the same Bolt Thrower chug by way of Nasum blast, and while the album may lack for variety, each of the 14 songs is like an incoming artillery round. From the sinuous, Nile-ish opener “Bellum Indicere” straight through the final shock of “…Before Annihilation,” Keitzer mine the sorry state of the world for inflammatory material. Just reading the song titles is likely to provoke PTSD in anyone who has spent time in a war zone: “Exist to Destroy,” “Forever War,” “Next Offensive” and “Glorious Dead” are dispatches from realms where bomb craters are more common than elementary schools with a soundtrack to match.<br />Musically, Keitzer do not deviate from the death-grind nexus that they’ve honed on past albums. If you’ve heard and enjoyed them in the past, then will offer up another 40 minute cluster bombing of the sound that’s served them so well. <br /><br /><i>[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]</i><br />
<i>The Last Defence</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-31613011461435589612014-08-13T20:25:00.001-04:002014-08-13T20:25:38.400-04:00G&P Review: Vertigo Index<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/vertigoindex">Vertigo Index</a><br /><i>Posthuman v1.1</i><br /><a href="http://vertigoindex.bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a></b><br />They’re named Vertigo Index. Do I really need to explain where these information snipers are coming from? On the off chance it’s not obvious, this carcass lottery from the remains of <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/bastards">Bastards</a> and <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/scum%20guilt">Scum Guilt</a> come apart together come together alone to worship at the altar of <i>Jouhou</i>. But in a refreshing twist, their damage style hews close to the <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/discordance%20axis">Discordance Axis</a> template without slavishly recapitulating the past.<br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3212500245/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://vertigoindex.bandcamp.com/album/posthuman-v11">Posthuman v1.1 by Vertigo Index</a></iframe><br /><br />Rather than going for another reincarnation, Vertigo Index shine brightest when they dial back the mimetic elements and take the Discordance Axis influence in new directions. Their best riffs indeed bathe in Rob Marton’s love of odd tones and musical tension, but through attrition Vertigo Index deliberately slow them down, putting one of this century’s fastest bands on a ruin trajectory with ominous sludge slog. EP standout “No Fate But What We Make” slows down a Marton-style riff to allow you to savor the odd interplay of the notes and the way they warp and bend through repetition and sustain. It’s a great, smart use of an influence without straight up mimicry. That’s not to say they can’t blast when needed. “Mother Boxx” tries to shove a Witte-grade blast beat through a 57 second aperture of pinholes, squeezing a career of acceleration into a super dense minute and it works splendidly.<br />In the increasingly crowded realm of Discordance Axis tribute acts, Vertigo Index are probably better than <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20parallax%20view">The Parallax View</a>, about on par with <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/syntax">Syntax</a> but not quite as good as <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/asterisk">Asterisk*</a>. Still, it’s a solid 3 out of 5 on <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052357/?ref_=nv_sr_1">the Kim Novak scale</a> for a promising first effort.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-17614863443958101132014-08-08T20:36:00.003-04:002014-08-08T20:36:52.300-04:00G&P Review: Jesus Cröst<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gcN4jBZihwo/U-VtDWgYf7I/AAAAAAAADtQ/zckCwfr15mM/s1600/jesuscrost.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gcN4jBZihwo/U-VtDWgYf7I/AAAAAAAADtQ/zckCwfr15mM/s1600/jesuscrost.png" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
<b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jesuscrostgrindcore">Jesus Cröst</a><br /><i>1986</i><br /><a href="http://www.bonesbrigaderecords.com/">Bones Brigade</a></b><br />The worst aspect of the quadrennial World Cup feets-ball tournament is suffering through that one coworker who has suddenly declared him- or herself grand poobah of all soccer, loudly pontificating on the arcane advancement rules gleaned from Wikipedia. I’ll never understand how the United States was able to<a href="http://time.com/2928541/world-cup-2014-football-soccer-us-germany/"> lose its way into each round</a>. (And quite honestly I don’t care because, duh, it’s soccer and I’m an American [USA! USA! USA! USA!]). But for those of you with fond memories of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus">Paul the Octopus</a> and a quarter hour to kill, Rotterdam soccer hooligans <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/jesus%20crost">Jesus Cröst</a> penned an ode to the 1986 World Cup on their third album.<br />Musically, the dynamic Dutch duo has not advanced the powerviolent arts significantly with <i>1986</i>. In fact, there’s a monochromatic quality to writing on the 22 songs that blurs them into a somewhat long and confusing whole (Hey, just like a soccer match! Perhaps it’s a meta commentary on the experience of watching the game?). <br />Taking a cue from <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/macabre">Macabre</a>, each song is dedicated to a different footballer of yore, shining 50 second spotlights on players that give the album a strong narrative quality even if the music is frustratingly lacking in diversity. It’s a great idea, but one similar song careens into another. It’s like watching a game from way up in the nosebleeds where you can’t see jersey numbers, so the action all becomes a formless smudge of people milling about way down on the field. Jesus Cröst’s past two albums were hacked from the same blast, pause, scream, blast foundation but they felt more invigorated and propulsive than <i>1986</i>. So it kind of sucks that this is their farewell effort knowing that they have so much more to give.<br />America’s periodic, herpes-like flare up of soccer fever has passed, but if you’re a football fan with a passion for powerviolence then Jesus Cröst have the (oddly specific) cultural crossover you’ve been waiting for. <i>1986</i> is not a bad album, but you’ve heard this done better, even by this band. <br /><i><br />[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-8481360776428953722014-07-20T21:07:00.000-04:002014-07-20T21:07:04.342-04:00Devil’s Horns: Exploring Grindcore’s Ongoing Fascination With the Saxophone<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7RQNLMnbuDI/U8xkFFaqN8I/AAAAAAAADs0/mYsyFFfeCoQ/s1600/kennyg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7RQNLMnbuDI/U8xkFFaqN8I/AAAAAAAADs0/mYsyFFfeCoQ/s1600/kennyg.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled,
maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous
flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the
detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and
absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless,
mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.”— H.P. Lovecraft,
“Nyarlathotep”</td></tr>
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It’s time we talk about grindcore’s dirty secret. <br />For 30 years—literally from the very first moment—grind musicians have been cheating on you with the must un-metal of instruments: the saxophone. (Yes, I know, literally, that's it made out of metal. You know what I mean, smart ass!)<br />Saxophone is that instrument your parents tried to foist on you when they misunderstood what exactly you meant when you told them you wanted to join a band. It’s probably not the instrument you picture yourself shredding on a stage in front of throngs of panty-throwing fans.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OGZl7izjlmA/U8xlGCNC76I/AAAAAAAADtA/NlF88vqwXs0/s1600/clintonsax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OGZl7izjlmA/U8xlGCNC76I/AAAAAAAADtA/NlF88vqwXs0/s1600/clintonsax.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ladies.</td></tr>
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However, it’s probably got more of a grindcore pedigree than you’d credit it at first blush. Its reedy wail has been adding an extra frisson to the wonted arsenal of slashing guitars and thumping drums for decades. If nothing else, dabbling in odd instrumentation will probably get you street cred as a serious musician who’s not afraid to test barriers. Also expect lazy reviewers to drop the term “jazzy” a lot when describing your song.<br />“Any band with a saxophone that doesn't play ska will eventually be described as jazz,” Dead Neanderthals saxophonist Otto said. “I'm really not into traditional jazz but love free jazz. Maybe we're a little jazz in that sense.”<br />Saxophone grind is still a bit of a novelty, and I’m certainly not advocating making it a full time thing, but maybe it’s time we recognize it’s not as incongruous as it sounds at first blush.<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="color: red;"><b>Grim Tidings</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/7zoOsvzXYL8" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Saxophone was there when grind was still mewling and covered in afterbirth. Grindcore progenitors <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/siege">Siege</a> famously whetted the reed for the carcinogenic seven minute beatnik freakout “Grim Reaper.” Vocalist Kevin Mahoney showed off his band camp chops as he wailed over the plodding tidings of death and despair that close out the Deranged Records version of <i>Drop Dead</i>. Siege was a band that smashed through the confines of hardcore to lay the foundation for a new breed of musical extremity. They were not a band to be confined to punk’s limited arsenal of instruments. Sax has literally been a part of grind’s DNA from day one. <br />“I absolutely LOVE Siege and Naked City,” Dead Neanderthals drummer René said. “I grew up listening to both bands. Nowadays, I listen a lot more to Siege than to Naked City. I guess I'm more of a sucker for raw and intense shit! That being said: I'm sure both bands influenced me in some way.”<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Sax in the City</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/YDME_k-vca0" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Though it sounds odd now, there was a time when grind’s extremity earned it a bizarre bit of cache from the wider musical world. John Peel famously championed England’s first blasters. Additionally, serious musical thinkers started appropriating grind’s skuzzy street energy for their own high art concepts. Enter mad sax man John Zorn who bent grindcore’s energy to his own perverted jazz ends with Naked City. Screeching alto sax mingles with blast beats and quick time changes as Zorn’s omnivorous ADHD music psyche cycles through every genre and musical permutation that can hold his interest for a bar or two.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Chicks Dig It</b></span><br /><br /><iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=2097041357/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/tracklist=false/artwork=small/track=3563942032/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://robocop.bandcamp.com/album/dead-language-foreign-bodies">Dead Language, Foreign Bodies by Robocop</a></iframe><br /><br />Looking to spruce up “Feminism Uber Alles” for the <i>Dead Language, Foreign Bodies</i> split, <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/robocop">Robocop </a>guitarist Ryan Page hornswaggled saxophonist Joshua Marshall into updating the song with his free jazz keen.<br />“Generally, Ryan will present me with a bare-bones recording of the most basic/foundational material of a given tune and will ask me to improvise over it,” Marshall said. “We'll do several takes with notes/suggestions from Ryan added over time. I try not to worry to much about 'performance' during these sessions, instead taking Ryan's material in as a source of inspiration, and doing my best to provide him with as much material as possible for him to play around with in the editing phase.”<br />The result was a radical reinterpretation of a song Robocop had already taken a couple of passes at themselves. It showed off something familiar in a wholly new light. Page said Marshall’s playing brought a new chaotic element to the song.<br />“Josh has a very aggressive sound when he wants to; there is a cohesion to his playing and a sense that the sounds are moving in a logical direction, but there can be large breaks in dynamics and timbre that cause a particular kind of discomfort that I've attempted to utilize when we've worked together,” Page said. “We're almost always on the same page when an idea is working or isn't, so typically we go through this process of recording a few takes, discussing possible alterations and recording again. This is pretty typical of how I work, especially with friends. I think he and I both had an idea of how we wanted it to sound, so when he heard the final recording of ‘Feminism’ he said something along the lines of, ‘I'm glad you were able to pull that out of there’ which is characteristically humble, but also implies that he knew the sound we needed to create."<br />For Marshall, his contribution also allowed him to step outside of his familiar prog and jazz background to experiment with something new.<br />“I think I've always struggled with the idea of finding my voice as a horn player in prog/rock/metal groups,” he said. “Most of what I play would probably be classified as electroacoustic improvisation, freejazz, and/or noise. I feel that there are a lot of nodes of resonance between what I've heard coming out of the grind scene and experiments with timbre and overblowing that you hear from horn players in freejazz and free improvisation. Ryan's approach to grind in particular, which incorporates his love for experimental electronic music, seems to make for fertile ground for a collaboration of this sort.”<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>If I Had a Hammer</b></span><br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/154691743&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe><br /><br />When Page flipped through his rolodex looking for collaborators on the second <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/body%20hammer">Body Hammer </a>album, <i>II: The Mechanism of Night</i>, it wasn’t much of a shock to see names like his former Robocop sidekick Luke Abbott. Rekindling his fruitful collaboration with Marshall wasn’t much of a shock either. The saxophonist contributed mutated lines to a trio of songs, including opening set piece “The Iron Bough.” Marshall said he adapted his free jazz techniques to match the needs of something a tad more extreme.<br />“As far as approach goes, I don't think it’s that much different than playing saxophone in a free improvisation context, Marshall said. “In either case, my desire is to be able to articulate to myself the particular properties of whatever I'm hearing, and develop some way of contributing to it that employs the full range of sounding possibilities on the saxophone. Overblowing, multiphonics and false fingers are techniques idiomatic to the horn which I think tend to work well with the textures Ryan creates, but I never want to allow those to become cliches. My hope is that I can always challenge myself to interpret a given set of stimuli poetically, paying heed to considerations like timbre and form without mimicking them.”<br />Body Hammer has drifted even further away from the pure grind aesthetic on <i>The Mechanism of Night</i> and Marshall’s sax playing sets the perfect tone of Page’s ambient nightmarescapes. The sax gets mutated and warped like every other piece of created or found sound that constitutes the soundtrack for that psychological horror film you’ve been meaning to make.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Sweet Dreams</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/J9pEhH-mVOc" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Brutal Truth was not shy about adding unconventional instruments to the mix (didgeridoo-core!) and drummer Rich Hoak carried that same fearlessness over to his other project <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/total%20fucking%20destruction">Total Fucking Destruction</a>. The jazzy, spazzy grindfreak railroad decided to garland “Last Night I Dreamt We Destroyed the World” with an apocalyptic saxophone scream that crushed musical boundaries like Israelites bringing down the walls of Jericho. <br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Brain Damage</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/GZRkggLTOYo" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Hearing a particularly clever bon mot at a party, Oscar Wilde was heard to observe, “I wish I had said that.” Painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (perhaps you’re familiar with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistler%27s_Mother">his mother</a>) quickly observed, “You will, Oscar, you will.” In that spirit, I offer you a truism: What Brutal Truth did in the ’90s, <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/cephalic%20carnage">Cephalic Carnage</a> would inevitably redo in the 2000s. So the Mile High City’s mile-highest trotted out the smooth jazz saxophone to bedazzle the final section of “Global Overhaul Device” for <i>Xenosapien</i>. I’m pretty sure weed was involved in the decision making. I bet you never wondered what adding Kenny G to a swampy death-grind song would sound like. Now you know. I never promised all of these would be good ideas.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>A Pox Upon You</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9arq-KsGCh4" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />With all the hip young things busting out the sax solos, you knew it was only a matter of time before old dogs <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/napalm%20death">Napalm Death</a> decided to bust out some new tricks. So it was that with album number 14 Napalm Death, the band whose very name is synonymous with grindcore itself, dropped the sax on “Everyday Pox.” But when you’re Napalm Death your name has the cache to rope in somebody like Zorn who is no stranger to the woodwind/blastbeat confluence (see above). We could debate whether it was a good idea, but for now let’s just be impressed that 20 years into their career, the current incarnation of Napalm Death even bothered to try it at all.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><b>Primitive Weapons</b></span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/lqUTjVYiOWA" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />And then there’s Dead Neanderthals. <br />Where most grind bands will selectively drop in the sax to prove their arty bonafides, the dynamic Dutch duo places the sax front and center, eschewing the wonted guitars, bass and vocals altogether. They make the keening saxophone lines the driving force of their crazy jazz –grind amalgam. But the self-described “New Wave of Dutch Heavy Jazz” duo didn’t set out to reinvent grindcore per se.<br />“We had drums and sax and what we ended up with was something close to grindcore,” Otto said. “We had no clue we'd end up with what we did. Although that it was hard, loud, and fast was always kind of an implicit assumption.”<br />Without a guitarist, bassist or vocalist, Otto’s reedy wail has to do more than its fair share of heavy lifting to keep the music moving forward.<br />“It's not so much 'replacement' as you just do different things with a sax than a guitar,” Otto said. “But one sax is indeed a lot less sound than a regular band. So we make sure our overall energy (and volume) is at ceiling levels.”<br />No matter how much arty grind bands have tried to mix saxophone into their farty, nobody has gone to the same lengths as Dead Neanderthals in pursuit of bizarre sonic extremity. Grind likes to pretend it’s some sort of transgressive music, but the truth is that after 30 years, it’s highly formalized. Dead Neanderthals prove that, under the right circumstances, it still can be bizarre and abrasive and assaulting.<br />“I think saxophone is really good at setting a specific mood: whether it's screaming madness or cheesy romance. It's not up to me to say how it's used best, but I guess I like it the most when it's shrieking intensely,” René said.<br />Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-32451091635327539882014-07-15T21:05:00.006-04:002014-07-15T21:05:56.311-04:00G&P Review: P.L.F.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/PLF/175466989192244">P.L.F.</a><br /><i>Ultimate Whirlwind of Incineration</i><br /><a href="http://rsrec.bigcartel.com/">RSR</a>/<a href="http://blastasfuk.blogspot.com/">Blastasfuk</a></b><br />Growing up in Tornado Alley, storms were a form of entertainment. I remember sitting on the porch with my dad as a kid watching the sky turn a queasy green right before a really ripping front would tear through the town. Black clouds would build over the horizon and we’d sit there as long as possible, waiting to catch a glimpse of a twister touching down before running inside for shelter.<br /><a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/p.l.f.">P.L.F.</a>’s <i>Ultimate Whirlwind of Incineration </i>channels some of that onrushing Great Plains thunderstorm vibe as the guitars brew up whirlwind riffs that chart dangerously high on the <a href="http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/f-scale.html">Fujita scale</a>. “Rejection of Pathos” lashes and snarls with the playful, arbitrary malevolence of a tornado, the way it flays about at random destroyed some neighborhoods and leaving other blocks untouched. Paired with the high winds of guitars, the drums <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/07/14/video-hail-storm-in-%20siberia-turns-nice-day-at-the-beach-into-a-bruiser/">rain hail</a> down in icy, pelting chunks. But once the initial welts fade, the drums will occasionally fade into the murky production, becoming the background patter of a thunderstorm on the roof.<br />And if <i>Ultimate Whirlwind of Incineration</i> has one flaw (and that’s a rare misstep for a P.L.F. who have consistently delighted), it’s that in nearly 25 minutes, the band doesn’t make room for any variety. Anybody who’s ever hunkered down in a storm cellar to wait out a tornado can tell you that eventually that frisson of danger from the storm sirens fades into a gray monotony as the wind’s unceasingly shrill howl becomes more background noise straining to capture a childhood imagination. A good peal of thunder and a flash of nearby lightning every now and again (the Assuck cover is a good start) would have could have foisted <i>Ultimate Whirlwind of Incineration</i> into storm of the century contention. Instead, it’s just one more good thundershower that spices up a hazy, humid summer and fades like a crack of heat lightning.<br /><br /><i>[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-66689148734085516592014-07-02T21:37:00.000-04:002014-07-02T21:37:01.615-04:00G&P Review: Dråp<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://sv-se.facebook.com/pages/DR%C3%85P/305747579538779">Dråp</a><br /><i>En Naturling Dod</i><br /><a href="https://soundcloud.com/emfrecords">Embrace My Funeral</a></b><br />First off, there’s not much here that you probably didn’t pull out of <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/anti%20cimex">Anti Cimex</a>’s raped ass 30 years ago. That said, like a high calorie, low nutrition fast food fix, there’s something about Dråp (Manslaughter) that just hits the spot. <i>En Naturling Dod</i> is the Swedish crust punk version of drunkenly plowing through Taco Bell’s drive through window for a <a href="http://www.tacobell.com/food/menuitem/quesarito?gclid=CjgKEAjw286dBRDmwbLi8KP71GQSJAAOk4sjUo8VTsNHigwXpza4P6kZQXjwCasRc70XtwLqvWCHv_D_BwE">quesarito</a> at 2 a.m.<br />Unlike a lot of their crusty contemporaries, Dråp aren’t appropriating death metal tropes to bulk up and refurbish their punk rawk. They closest these heavily bearded Viking punks come to extra-genre exploration is a nod to thrashtastic chug-a-lug and the occasional squealy guitar solo. So everything barrels along at a more or less consistent head banging nod that makes <i>En Naturling Dod</i> a pretty good driving record. From the black and white artwork straight through the familiarity of the music of itself, Dråp will live and die by how well they can get one more good go-round out of a style that doesn’t lend itself to musical innovation. <br />With that in mind, the 10 songs on <i>En Naturling Dod</i> are uniformly tight and uniformly ... uniform. (In a rare nod to variety, “Horstmorker” slows down and probably drags out more than is needed.) Dråp have a solid foundation to work with and injecting some solid hooks and a more commanding vocal style could have them nipping at <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/victims">Victims</a>’ heels. What Dråp may lack (or simply not give a fuck about) in originality, they make up for with energy and brevity, pounding through 10 songs in under 25 minutes, playing like the world might end before they finish. It makes <i>En Naturling Dod</i> a head rush of a record and one that can flipped back over for repeated spins. And if you’re asking for more than that from your crust punk records, you’re probably doing it wrong.<br /><br /><i>[Full disclosure: I received a review copy.]</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-70331499996398596282014-06-16T20:29:00.002-04:002014-06-16T20:29:47.856-04:00The Namesake Series: “War Pig(s)”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I’ve mentioned before that it takes some serious confidence to jack a Black Sabbath song title because the inevitable comparison will probably not redound to your honor. Swedish noisecore dervishes <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-namesake-series-black-sabbath.html">Breach tried it before</a> with Black Sabbath’s namesake song. But they’re not the only ones to give in to the temptation. But here we go again.<br />
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“War Pigs” is inarguably one of Black Sabbath’s greatest songs. You love it. I love it. It’s a doomy, moody, apocalyptic masterpiece. Its hastily rewritten lyrics (it was originally called “Walpurgis”) straddle Sabbath’s twin obsessions with the occult and the fucked up state of modern society, blending black magic and the Vietnam War into a single tale of a society tumbling on the verge of satanic anarchy.<br />
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So of course repetitive Japanese mash monsters Zeni Geva singularized the song as “War Pig” and flayed it into a seven minute slog of a riff that smashes against your brain like a bunker buster of noise rock. K.K. Null is the most accomplished master of entrancing repetition this side of Michael Gira and “War Pig” is a relentless Godzilla rampage of stomping drums and multiheaded King Ghidorah string strangling. All in all, Zeni Geva hold their own against the undisputed masters of metal misery.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-48656685255556127902014-06-09T10:22:00.000-04:002014-06-09T10:22:00.444-04:00Blast(beat) from the Past: Defecation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="http://www.myspace.com/defecationcontinuum">Defecation</a><br /><i>Purity Dilution</i><br /><a href="http://www.nuclearblast.com/en/">Nuclear Blast</a><br />1989</b><br />Defecation is Mitch Harris’ personal <a href="http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu/">Tiktaalik</a>. It’s a transitional fossil that unites the malformed punk of his earliest efforts in <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/righteous%20pigs">Righteous Pigs</a> and the death-grind hybridization of <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/napalm%20death">Napalm Death</a>. Harris closed out the ’80s by roping in his brother by another mother, drummer Mick Harris, and the duo churned out <i>Purity Dilution</i>, a tidy little half hour from an era when two and three minute blast fests were not unheard of.<br /><i>Purity Dilution</i> was a huge step forward for guitar Harris’ songwriting after Righteous Pigs and he has a palpable chemistry with drum Harris (amazing what a drummer who can actually keep the beat will do for you). Given their simpatico and the way Defecation blended their two prior bands, it must have been a real shock for music fans the next year when Napalm Death went full on death metal on <i>Harmony Corruption</i>.<br />That anomaly aside, <i>Purity Dilution</i> was a distilled dose of Harris’ songwriting sensibilities. There are the familiar riffs that would populate Napalm Death’s third wave albums once Harris and Jesse Pintado settled into the riff duties. “Scrutiny” is one Barney growl away from slotting without notice on <i>Utopia Banished</i>. Even the pastiche artwork evokes Napalm Death’s sensibilities. Produced by Danny Lilker, <i>Purity Dilution</i>’s warm, low slung chug sounds like a Napalm Death album put through a Bolt Thrower filter.<br />Mitch Harris played all of the instruments on a second Defecation album in 2003, but part of <i>Purity Dilution</i>’s charm is hearing two Napalm Death conspirators rip out a fun album that has a strong core without the baggage of their bigger band’s name hovering over the project. There’s a looseness and a freedom to the first Defecation record that makes it a charming artifact of a bygone era.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/0Z7iAY_jTkA" width="540"></iframe>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-61899409728828231152014-06-02T20:32:00.000-04:002014-06-02T20:32:33.662-04:00Into the Throat of Berserk<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My "GridLink broke up" face.</td></tr>
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Extreme metal vocals are largely just another blunt instrument – one more unintelligible weapon in a band’s arsenal of noise. For the most part, that’s all they really need to be, another tool in the mix. There’s not exactly a lot of down time in grind songs. So when the band gets rolling, singers are left to try and keep pace and fight for space in the mix.<br />But occasionally savvy musicians will know when and how to pull back. Putting the vocals forefront and providing a moment of clarity can really punctuate a song both lyrically and musically. Slamming the music to a halt to let the vocals stand on their own is a great attention grabber when done right.<br />Here’s a handful of ways it’s been put to good use.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">You Scream, I Scream</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/3-otsNrf6AE" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />Southern crust punkers <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/antischism">Antischism</a> were pissed off. They wanted to scream. They wanted you to know that they wanted to scream. So on the song “Scream” they built in space for vocalist Lyz to make that point readily apparent. The result is a musical pause that gives Lyz the space to “SCREAM!” She’s screaming about the need to scream which is all kinds of cathartic and meta at the same time.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">Name Dropper</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_nIL4uMBK10" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />
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A <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/napalm%20death">Napalm Death</a> play in one act:<br />
<br />“Gee, Barney, what’s the name of the next song?”<br /><br />“MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIND SNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARE!”<br /><br />“Thanks for clearing that up.”<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">Mother Goose vs. the Grindfather</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oUd_WMCkCQs" width="540"></iframe><br /><br /><a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/drugs%20of%20faith">Drugs of Faith</a> mastermind Richard Johnson made potent use of the musical pause on <i>Corroded</i>’s ode to rationality over religion “Age of Reason.” To punctuate his point about the value of freethinking, the song holds its breath long enough for him to scream out his intention to live “WITHOUT. THE. FAIRY. TALES.” From there, the song chooses to slowly spool out, as though all of the rush had built up to that single, powerful moment and then gave up in exhaustion. It makes the point that much more powerful.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">You’re Hot Then You’re Cold</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/EJtYCbVAUa4" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />
Jesus’ favorite grinders <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/rehumanize">Rehumanize</a> turn the book of Revelation’s tale of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laodicean_Church#.22I_wish_that_you_were_cold_or_hot.22_.28Revelation_3:15.E2.80.9316.29">lukewarm church at Laodecia</a> into a grinding nightmare of vengeance and dismay on the song “Planet Loadecia.” While the song doesn’t come to a full stop, clearly its centerpiece is the relatively clean middle section where the band, personifying God, announce that “I WILL SPIT YOU OUT OF MY MOUTH.” Taken as a tale of divine retribution, that’s the moment when the implacable deity has passed judgment and only doom will follow. There can be no appeal and no reparations. Justice from that point on is swift and merciless.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-36135839269579132012014-05-27T21:18:00.004-04:002014-05-27T21:18:53.297-04:00Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus: How Assück’s Anticapital Defines Grindcore Imagery<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I submit to you that <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/Assuck">Assück</a>’s <i>Anticapital</i> is the greatest album cover in grindcore. There may be images that are more iconic, more striking and more artistic. But <i>Anticapital</i> manages to perfectly embody and define everything that grindcore’s first and second waves stood for.<br /><i>Anticapital </i>boasts a deceptively simple image for a no-frills band that believed in the power of grindcore’s to the point aggression.<br />First, the 1991 album’s black and white aesthetic is a throwback and nod to the crust punk that birthed and defined the earliest grindcore practitioners. It harkens back to Crass, Discharge and a whole wave of Scandinavian imitators who wore sketchy lo-fi, DIY visuals as a badge of honor. It’s also a refinement of Napalm Death and Siege’s aesthetic, adding a compositional balance and refinement to grindcore’s earliest visual cut and paste, home sketched lexicon.<br />The image is also conceptually weighty; it’s got the artistic and intellectual chops to stand next to Assück’s lyrical bile. The man lashed to a gear, slave to the industrial processes that dominated the 20th Century and its rush to prosperity, is also a metaphor for how the common man feels in the face of those faceless, implacable, unrelenting forces. Industrialization lifted much of the world’s population up from nothing and gave them a prosperity they could never previously attain. However, it also threatened that existence as processes became more refined and automated. Humanity saw itself become obsolete as more jobs were taken out of its hands and transferred to machinery.<br />Whether intentional or not, the image also calls to mind Charlie Chaplin’s <i>Modern Times</i> as workers try to keep up with the insatiable demands of the industrial line. Eventually, their very bodies are sucked into the machinery, human grease for the wheels of progress.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IjarLbD9r30" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />That unease would only grow throughout the late 20th and early 21st Centuries as modernization and globalization meant that not only machines but cheap labor a globe away could snatch back that very same prosperity they proffered. It’s the uneasy relationship between man and the means of production that give him the life he craves that makes the visual work. Like good political dissidents, Assück's art turns Marxist agitprop on its head, questioning the value of the very same industry that promised the workers a new life of ease.<br />Revolutionary firebrands that they were, Assück’s imagery also evokes ’60s political activist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio">Mario Savio</a>’s famous “gears of the machine” speech where he exhorted student protestors to stand in the way of the forces that were arrayed against them. Students’ very bodies needed be the protest that called faceless power to account for its actions.<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/PhFvZRT7Ds0" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />All of those associations feed into the rage that fueled Assück. It’s an image that not only perfectly encapsulates what made <i>Anticapital</i> amazing; it also strikes a visual tone that embodies the spirit that motivated grindcore’s progenitors. It’s an image that perfectly assembled and balanced all of the elements that were in play at the time, creating a striking amalgam. Grindcore is full of indelible imagery, from <i>The Inalienable Dreamless</i>’ stunning seascape and <i>Drop Dead</i>’s skulls to <i>Reek of Putrefaction</i>’s meat collages and <i>Sounds of the Animal Kingdom</i>’s man-beast hybrid. Each image is the first portal into the music within. But very few images, such as the <i>Anticapital</i> art, so precisely define not only an album but a whole wave of musical innovators. Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-15269271138578161982013-12-05T20:41:00.000-05:002013-12-05T20:41:23.711-05:00Sabbatical, Bloody Sabbatical<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/8sdn9Um3iW4?feature=player_detailpage" width="540"></iframe><br /><br />The time has come for me to step aside. After six years and more than 800 posts, I’ve written myself out. I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say and interviewed the bands I’ve really wanted to talk to. <br />It may not be permanent. For now I’m thinking of it as a sabbatical, but either way I need a blog break. Writing has become a struggle and I’ve found myself missing the deadlines I set for myself and not really caring all that much. I’m just kind of burned out. Right now I’m looking at almost 50 albums that people have graciously submitted for review and I just can’t find the energy to get to them all. I keep finding myself listening to old albums I grew up with rather than the new music people share with me. Having people ask you to listen to their art and offer an opinion is a privilege and if I can’t approach it with the right attitude then I shouldn’t be doing it at all. So, if you’re one of those 50 people, I sincerely apologize. Especially if you’re the one of a dozen or more I’ve been sitting on for six months. That’s bad even by my laggardly standards. <br />Unlike the last time I seriously thought about packing it in, this time I feel absolutely no anxiety. This is the right decision for the time being. But before I go (for however long I may be away), I need to thank each and every one of you, everyone who has read a post, left a comment, sent an email or directed me toward new music. You’ve all made this a very rewarding part of my life the last few years. I’m not going to disappear entirely. I’ll keep the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Grind-and-Punishment/381428568602181">Facebook page</a> going for the time being. I just don’t think I have blog length writing in my immediate future. After I take a few months off to rest and recharge and find my spark, that may change. Maybe not. Either way, it’s been a hell of a ride. In my arrogance, when I started I set the simple goal of having the best grind blog on the internet. In my arrogance, I think I got pretty damn close. Maybe after some time away I’ll find that fire. Or I’ll decide it’s time to close that chapter of my life permanently. Either way, thanks for coming along for the rideAndrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-31745863012789073822013-12-03T20:51:00.000-05:002013-12-03T20:51:17.335-05:00Grind in Rewind 2013Punctuality has never been my strong point, but I thought I’d get ahead of the curve this year and put out my year end list a bit early. Yay me.<br />
This year, in particular, I have to thank all the cool bands and labels who were generous enough to share their music with me. Since the advent of the Lil Grinder, my discretionary music buying budget has been slashed to zero. So more than ever I’m <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSTd1LuiVUs">reliant upon the kindness of strangers</a>. And this year strangers had some pretty damn good taste. Let’s get down to it.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cznBETj5fQk/Up6JG8lxwsI/AAAAAAAADqE/1M8iT001HWY/s1600/dead.suffering.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-cznBETj5fQk/Up6JG8lxwsI/AAAAAAAADqE/1M8iT001HWY/s200/dead.suffering.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>10. <a href="http://www.dead-church.com/news.html">Dead Church</a>/<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Suffering-Mind/134718523252938">Suffering Mind</a></b><br />
<i><b>Split</b></i><br />
<a href="http://7degreesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/7dr018-dead-church-suffering-mind-split-5"><b>7 Degrees</b></a><br />
Don’t get the wrong idea. The only thing that puts this split down at number 10 is the fact that it’s <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/06/g-review-dead-churchsuffering-mind.html">just one song from each band</a>. But sweet holy fucking Shiva on a shingle, those two songs are absolute humdingers. Suffering Mind have been operating at an extremely high level for quite a few years now, but “War Street/Wall Street” may be the most perfect distillation of the Polish band’s polish and promise that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a perfect little grind tune. Flipside, Dead Church match Suffering Mind’s intensity, chewing through “I Want Nothing” like Al Pacino with an electric scenery gnawing machine powered by cocaine and incinerated copies of <i>Godfather Part 3</i>. Normally, one song from a band is not worth the wax it occupies, but this split is definitely the exception.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FB_0AccLDB4/Up6JHT6nDxI/AAAAAAAADqM/ZbgROD-JlRQ/s1600/detroit.reality.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FB_0AccLDB4/Up6JHT6nDxI/AAAAAAAADqM/ZbgROD-JlRQ/s200/detroit.reality.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>9. <a href="http://detroitpv.bandcamp.com/">Detroit</a></b><br />
<i><b>Reality Denied</b></i><br />
<a href="http://grindcorekaraoke.com/album/reality-denied"><b>Grindcore Karaoke</b></a><br />
Detroit have been on a roll recently and Reality Denied just <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/06/g-review-detroit.html">keeps that trend trucking</a> like one of the diesel huffing monstrosities churned out by their namesake city. The album may start with “False” but Detroit remains true: loose and spastic and flailing with the abandon of youth. Every song is hewed from the molds established by Napalm Death and Capitalist Casualties, but they’re played with an aplomb that keep that from being merely derivative. There’s a sincerity of focus that elevates them beyond their humble ambitions.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c3WO7nV6PAI/Up6JIdQT-CI/AAAAAAAADqc/83Ap4hUfKmU/s1600/rottensound.species.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c3WO7nV6PAI/Up6JIdQT-CI/AAAAAAAADqc/83Ap4hUfKmU/s200/rottensound.species.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>8. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RottenSoundOfficial">Rotten Sound</a></b><br />
<i><b>Species at War</b></i><br />
<a href="https://www.relapse.com/"><b>Relapse</b></a><br />
Just when I’d accepted that Rotten Sound’s <i>Murderworks</i>/<i>Exit</i> days were behind them and they were in more of a fast crust punk mold, the Finns start banging out awesome EPs that capture the vibe of their earliest material. <i>Species at War </i>was <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/05/g-review-rotten-sound.html">another great short effort</a>, a snarling little bugbear of bad attitude and unrelenting pessimism. Rotten Sound sound ripped to the gills on humanity’s self-inflicted bullshit and they’re ready to push the button to end it all. The apocalypse has never sounded so upbeat.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KHceKvRSVGU/Up6JI5LIJbI/AAAAAAAADqk/JMGYafDQCvc/s1600/sacridose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KHceKvRSVGU/Up6JI5LIJbI/AAAAAAAADqk/JMGYafDQCvc/s200/sacridose.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>7. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Sacridose">Sacridose</a></b><br />
<i><b>Anxiety Tremors</b></i><br />
<b><a href="http://financialruinrecords.bigcartel.com/product/sacridose-anxiety-tremors-7">Financial Ruin</a>/<a href="http://sacridose.bandcamp.com/album/anxiety-tremors">Bandcamp</a></b><br />
Cellgraft offshoot Sacridose sound like the former crossed up with a soupcon of Cloud Rat’s fast hardcore rampage. It’s a winning combination. <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/10/g-review-sacridose.html">Plus they cover Rudimentary Peni</a>. Always a bonus. That aside, their original material is a shattered glass tornado of whirling aggression and vertiginous blasting twists. It’s lean and it’s mean and it’s got a hardcore soul that keeps it from being too easily tagged as Cellgraft resurgent.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-89NUHsl-bHk/Up6JKT9hr2I/AAAAAAAADq8/f9bbOeIL8PM/s1600/slavestate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-89NUHsl-bHk/Up6JKT9hr2I/AAAAAAAADq8/f9bbOeIL8PM/s200/slavestate.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>6. <a href="http://slavestatepig.bandcamp.com/">Slavestate 641A</a></b><br />
<i><b>Masochist</b></i><br />
<b><a href="http://grindcorekaraoke.com/album/masochist">Grindcore Karaoke</a>/<a href="http://namelikehismaster.bigcartel.com/">Name Like His Master</a></b><br />
This is <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/10/g-review-slavestate-641a.html">not grind in the musical sense</a>. It’s grind in the tectonic sense. It’s the slow motion smashing of giant plates of earth, buckling and crumbling under the pressure of uncompromising repetition. Born from Robocop, who helped lead the power violence resurgence, Slavestate 641A pull much the same trick on classic Godflesh and Swans, reinvigorating heavy as fuck slow motion misery that crawls along at a stumble step. It’s death by degrees and it’s demanding but the payoff is emotionally satisfying and enervating. It take it that’s how masochism is supposed to work.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-79S9D1JGtsQ/Up6JHxsduII/AAAAAAAADqU/XYjLJmIRI_U/s1600/gowl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-79S9D1JGtsQ/Up6JHxsduII/AAAAAAAADqU/XYjLJmIRI_U/s200/gowl.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>5. <a href="http://gowl.bandcamp.com/">Gowl</a></b><br />
<i><b>Buzzbox</b></i><br />
<b>Self Released</b><br />
Gowl raged right out of nowhere (i.e. Connecticut) in 2013, leaving a <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/06/g-review-gowl.html">smoldering nuclear crater of irradiated awesomeness</a> in their too brief wake. The onomatopoeitic <i>Buzzbox</i> lives up to its name with a snarling tiptoe through Backslider’s garden, which is planted high with amp buzz and clanking snare. It’s a glorious little cacophony that doesn’t offer too much in the way of originality, but it’s delivered with bravado and abandon. That’s really all I ask.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-86JCKTNr5ss/Up6JLTVgO4I/AAAAAAAADrE/9FOZcq-JObI/s1600/wake.fals.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-86JCKTNr5ss/Up6JLTVgO4I/AAAAAAAADrE/9FOZcq-JObI/s200/wake.fals.png" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>4. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wakegrind">Wake</a></b><br />
<i><b>False</b></i><br />
<b><a href="http://7degreesrecords.bandcamp.com/album/7dr019-wake-false-lp">7 Degrees</a>/<a href="http://www.handshakeinc.com/">Handshake Inc.</a></b><br />
Wake have been churning out amazing records with such regularity now that it’s almost easy to take them for granted. <i>False</i> is <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/09/g-review-wake.html">another immaculate entry</a> into their already enviable discography. Its chief success is corralling together another 11 songs that each have their own voice and personality and then having the confidence to let the songs breathe and stake out their own space. Wake haven’t stumbled yet so <i>False</i> makes me truly eager to hear what the Canadians churn out next.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a5BLHPCOvuU/Up6JJ57oBYI/AAAAAAAADq0/52YXAcDE7C8/s1600/sick-tired.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a5BLHPCOvuU/Up6JJ57oBYI/AAAAAAAADq0/52YXAcDE7C8/s200/sick-tired.jpg" width="200" /></a><b></b><b>3. <a href="http://sick-tired.bandcamp.com/album/king-of-dirt-12-lp">Sick/Tired</a></b><br />
<i><b>King of Dirt</b></i><br />
<a href="http://www.cowabungarecords.com/"><b>Cowabunga</b></a><br />
King of Dirt worships at the <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/07/g-reviewsicktired.html">altar pure noise</a>. Noisecore has a special place in my heart and Sick/Tired pluck at each and every string. It’s a chaotic blast of everything that makes grind great. Even the ending on the slow noise song cliché takes on a new vitality at their twisted behest. It’s noisy, angular and strikes with a concussive force. And I keep coming back for more. This is definitely one of my most listened albums in 2013 and it’s still a part of my regular musical rotation. Their follow up EP is just as badass.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HK37fjIBLN4/Up6JJU5fIKI/AAAAAAAADqs/qkUFksraUuA/s1600/saviour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HK37fjIBLN4/Up6JJU5fIKI/AAAAAAAADqs/qkUFksraUuA/s200/saviour.jpg" width="197" /></a><b></b><b>2. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Whos-My-Saviour/571979736169151">Who’s My Savior</a></b><br />
<i><b>Wall of Sickness</b></i><br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/7DegreesRecords/443059589044797"><b>7 Degrees</b></a><br />
Look, I’ve been raving about Who’s My Saviour for years now. I think <i>Glasgow Smile </i>is a certified fucking classic. So I don’t know how much more I need to say to them. Why aren’t you listening to this shit right this fucking minute? Because <i>Wall of Sickness </i>is another <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/09/g-whos-my-saviour.html">brilliant slice of twisted grind</a> from the German trio, who refuse to be bound by grindcore convention but never leave their roots too far behind. <i>Wall of Sickness</i> is an amazing slow build EP that boasts some of Who’s My Saviour’s catchiest songs and these guys excel at writing a memorable grind hook.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N7ePm_AHVfE/Up6JGPPxnOI/AAAAAAAADp8/WO7DKxKjGkQ/s1600/cloudrat.moksha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N7ePm_AHVfE/Up6JGPPxnOI/AAAAAAAADp8/WO7DKxKjGkQ/s320/cloudrat.moksha.jpg" width="320" /></a><b></b><b></b><b>1. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cloud-Rat/182492468498487">Cloud Rat</a></b><br />
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<b><i><b>Moksha</b></i></b></div>
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<b><a href="http://www.ifbrecords.com/">IFB</a>/<a href="http://www.halooffliesrecords.com/">Halo of Flies</a>/<a href="http://www.reactwithprotest.org/">React With Protest</a>/<a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/7DegreesRecords/443059589044797">7 Degrees</a></b><br />
I <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2013/01/their-bodies-performance-machine-cloud.html">called this one back in January</a>. I stand by it 11 months later. Simply put, there has not been another album that comes close to <i>Moksha’s</i> transformative emotional experience this year. Cloud Rat sneak in His Hero is Gone melody and a Neil Young cover as part of the most unabashedly emotional and riveting album in recent memory. <i>Moksha</i> is harrowing in its honesty and plaintive in its frustrated sincerity. No matter how bleak life gets, Cloud Rat still strive for the light of hope. Madison absolutely brought it this album, screaming her soul out to make <i>Moksha</i> the standout musical experience that it is.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-14205892048533563222013-11-25T21:00:00.003-05:002013-11-25T21:00:43.246-05:00Punk Rock DocsOne of my pet peeves is how punks are often portrayed in popular culture. Too often they’re the lunkhead with the ridiculous clothes and hair who is treated like a running punchline. The image of the idiot punk is so ingrained that they’re almost automatically assumed to be falling down drunks who are little more than comic relief devoid of personality or prospects whenever they pop up. In my experience, it’s the direct opposite. Punks are the musical smart asses: the intelligent kid in the back of the room who can do the work but just doesn’t take it seriously. It takes a keen mind to zero in on society’s myriad failures in a way that’s hilarious, excoriating and trenchant all at once.<br />
But some punks have taken that a step further by putting their diplomas where their mouths are, earning some serious academic accolades outside of the mosh pit.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Milo Went to College</span><br />
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<b>The brainiac:</b> Milo Aukerman of the Descendants<br />
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<b>How he’s smarter than you:</b> The original punk rock nerd, Auckerman defied every musical convention of the time by writing unabashedly geeky songs about striking out with girls, coffee and wanting to grow up and own a home and a maybe a boat. Not exactly the image of raging punk rock rebellion, but it just worked, making the Descendants the innovators of pop punk. But that wasn’t just some stage persona; the bespectacled Auckerman lived up to the nerd hype. The Descendants’ first album was called<i> Milo Goes to College</i> because at the time Auckerman was off at the University of San Diego studying molecular biology. Doctorate in hand, these days Auckerman can be found lab coating it up around <a href="http://www.ehu.es/ehusfera/lance/2011/02/11/punks-not-dead-does-science/">the halls of DuPont</a> where he’s a plant researcher in between the Descendants’ periodic resurrections.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Against the Grain</span><br />
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<b>The brainiac:</b> Greg Graffin of Bad Religion<br />
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<b>How he’s smarter than you:</b> When he’s not fronting the most verbose punk band on the planet, Graffin is running with the tweed-jacket-with-leather-elbow-patches set as a life sciences and evolution professor. Not content to be merely brilliant in one academic track, Graffin studied anthropology and geology before getting his doctorate in zoology from Cornell Univeristy. Putting his degrees to practice, Graffin has been a guest professor at both UCLA and Cornell. While Graffin’s lyrics pack a ridiculous amount of intellectual punch in the space of two minutes, using anthropology, physics, chemistry and archaeology as metaphors to make his point, he decided barreling punk rock may not give him the space to fully express himself. Graffin has <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_16600583">written or co-written several books</a> that touch on anarchy, evolution, atheism and humanistic morality. Not bad for a teenaged punk from the Los Angeles ’burbs.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Punk and Biology—Keep Em Separated</span><br />
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<b>The brainiac:</b> Dexter Holland of The Offspring<br />
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<b>How he’s smarter than you:</b> Bryan “Dexter” Holland was in line for a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of Southern California when this whole punk rock thing took off. So he dropped the books and decided to make The Offspring his priority. While he’s stepped from academia to the stage, Holland has kept one foot firmly in the lab. He says his doctorate work is still in progress. In 2013 he <a href="http://kroq.cbslocal.com/2013/03/21/dexter-holland-from-the-offspring-publishes-research-paper-what-the-heck-is-it-about/">contributed to the paper </a><i>Identification of Human MicroRNA-Like Sequences Embedded within the Protein-Encoding Genes of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus</i>. You’ve got to have at least a master’s to even decipher what the hell that even means.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">What's His Escape Plan?</span><br />
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<b>The braniac:</b> Lane Pederson of Dillinger Four<br />
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<b>How he’s smarter than you:</b> You’ve kinda gotta be crazy to pile into a van and travel cross country in attempt to make punk rock a way of life. Dr. Lane Pederson would know. When he’s not pounding the skins for poppy Minnesota hardcore goofs Dillinger Four, he’s a clinical psychology researcher and <a href="http://www.mhs-pc.com/content/dr-lane-pederson">author of several well-regarded tomes</a> on the science of behavioral therapy. That’s not exactly the kind of sideline you expect from a dude who’s part of a band best known for such intellectual odes as “A Floater Left with Pleasure In The Executive Washroom.” But I bet he’s got a pretty good explanation for the psychology behind it.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Doctor Who?</span><br />
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<b>The brainiac: </b>Dr. Know of Bad Brains<br />
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<b>How he’s smarter than you:</b> Dr. Know was awarded an honorary DFA in badassery from Hilly Kristal University in 1983. It’s right there in his fucking name.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="350" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/thnb3UlH2zE" width="540"></iframe>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-55688214042810877662013-11-18T20:44:00.000-05:002013-11-18T20:48:44.579-05:00Freaks on Parade: Grindcore Still Puts a (Glasgow) Smile on Who’s My Saviour’s FacesThe term “grindcore” probably evokes a pretty specific set of characteristics: blastbeats, screams, a punk core, indecipherable screaming, micro songs, incoherent politics. <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/who%27s%20my%20saviour">Who’s My Saviour</a> don’t want you to dwell on any of that when you encounter their crawling chaos of whirlwind sound. They cop to the grindcore tag as the best fit for their unique racket. They just don’t want to be limited by your crabbed definitions. Grindcore is a much broader term in Who’s My Saviour’s world than most people will allow.<br />
“In its roots, grindcore wasn't that limited genre like it is today. It wasn't even meant as a genre but more like a melting pot for everything which didn't fit into existing genres,” guitarist Stephan “Hazy” Haase said. “Today when you're speaking of grindcore, people think of bad musicians playing ridiculous fast songs with mainly blastbeats, crying evil lyrics, that no one understands at all because 90 percent of the bands in the scene fit into that scheme. We try to get this thing more open for new influences. No fuckin limits!”<br />
So the German trio brings a whole host of outside sounds to Who’s My Saviour and the result is a masterful mix of emotionally charged grind full of individually memorable songs with actual riffs that have a definite starting point and consciously evolve and mutate before the end. In a sea of 30 second bursts of repetitive riffs and single shot ideas, Who’s My Saviour are a verdant island of abundant musical fecundity.<br />
“In fact WMS has always been meant to be a bit different from classic grind bands,” Hazy said. “We are all listening to many different kinds of music apart from grindcore metal stuff. According to that, we wish to bring many different aspects to our music to keep it interesting for ourselves and the listener.”<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>You March</b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A wall of sickness... and amps</td></tr>
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It’s been six years since Who’s My Saviour graced us with the under the radar grindcore masterpiece <i><a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/glasgow%20smile">Glasgow Smile</a></i>, but the trio, rounded out by bassist Andy Colosser and new drummer Peat (who replaces the departed Pierre Bernhardt,) roared back in fine fettle with the triumphant <i><a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/wall%20of%20sickness">Wall of Sickness</a></i>. It’s a ripped from the headlines missive from the underclass who got stuck with the check when the too big to fail bankers wafted away on golden parachutes courtesy of the public treasury. Hazy said Who’s My Saviour have always had a political edge buried under their façade of intricately spiraling music, but this time out the anger is closer to the surface. It’s all kicked off by an exquisite sample of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8AXd1ayxrg">Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuano ripping</a> into the architects of the recent global financial meltdown. It’s the perfect mood setter for the revolutionary rabble rousing to come.<br />
“We were always interested in politics and what's happening in the world. Maybe it is a bit more obvious because of the samples we used on <i>Wall of Sickness</i>, but in general you won't recognize a big difference between both records, if you check the lyrics,” Hazy said. “Of course we kind of react to the financial crisis and its consequences. Ordinary people have to pay the banks while the banks don´t have to fear any restrictions. So the sample of Mike Capuano was just perfect to describe the big gap between the banks and those who have to refinance the bailout. You can really hear that he is totally pissed and that this is what most people think. Check the song ‘This World Belongs to Us’. This is what we think about the situation.”<br />
While Who’s My Saviour say the music always comes first, they’ve shown an incredibly deft hand with samples. <i>Glasgow Smile</i> closes out with one of my favorite ever songs, “Save Your Breath,” which wraps a sinuous stoner riff around a perfectly placed sample borrowed from the film <i>2001</i>. It’s all the more impressive when I learned the song was a last minute addition to the album and a bit of a happy accident.<br />
“Funny fact about ‘Save Your Breath’. We wrote that song in about 15 minutes,” Hazy said. “We came to the point that we just need one more song and it should be plain simple. After recording that song, we already had in mind that we want to use this particular sample from <i>2001 - A Space Odyssey</i> from Stanley Kubrick and it worked out pretty good.”<br />
Who’s My Saviour pulled the same trick on <i>Wall of Sickness</i> with closing track “Weedeater,” which also wraps itself around a sample to punctuate the catharsis the album had slowly built toward.<br />
“It was pretty much clear that ‘Weedeater’ had to be the last song, because for us it was the perfect solution to leave the listener with a feeling of quite unwellness,” Hazy said.<br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b>This World Belongs to Us</b></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Weedeaters pause the grind for a slice.</td></tr>
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I had already mentally reconciled myself to Who’s My Saviour being that perfect one album wonder before <i>Wall of Sickness</i> appeared almost out of nowhere. It was actually intended to be the band’s farewell statement, but a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral.<br />
All of the members of Who’s My Saviour have been pulled in myriad musical directions over the last decade. Hazy previously did time in <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/cyness">Cyness</a> while Colosser still pulls double duty in <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/wojczech">Wojczech</a>. Drummer Bernhardt eventually reached the point where he had decided to devote himself full time to his other project Bad Luck Rides on Wheels. Who’s My Saviour thought they had reached the end of their road.<br />
“We lost the ‘battle ‘, but we are still friends and we understand the situation he was in,” Hazy said. “Andy and Pierre are even sharing an apartment. He also recorded <i>Wall of Sickness</i>, played the drums and did the mixing job along with our new drummer Peat. Everything is fine and change is still something good. We decided to record these songs after Pierre told us that he´s going to quit the band. We didn't even think about playing with a new drummer because it is hard to find a guy playing drums like he did. And then all of a sudden Peat fell from heaven.”<br />
So that’s how Who’s My Saviour ended up answering these questions from the road on their recent European tour as they look forward to tackling South America in early 2014 with friends Wojczech. It’s a tour that will force Colosser to double shift by playing bass and singing for both bands.<br />
“Andy has been playing with Wojczech and WMS for over a decade now and we always played shows and tours together,” Hazy said. “He is used to do[ing] this although it is always a tough job, especially doing vocals twice a show. I will train that bastard up so he will be in shape for the Brazil attack.”Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-50024364075536056812013-11-14T20:11:00.004-05:002013-11-14T20:11:55.704-05:00G&P Review: Limbs Bin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/limbsbin">Limbs Bin</a><br /><i>Summertime Blues</i><br /><a href="http://grindcorekaraoke.com/album/summertime-blues">Grindcore Karaoke</a></b><br />Limbs Bin make only one mistake on <i>Summertime Blues</i>, but it’s a bit akin to booking your kids for a relaxing August getaway at Camp Crystal Lake. I have a congenital hole in my soul that can only be filled by insane drum machine grind, but the gaps between songs on <i>Summertime Blues</i> are just fucking massive. Just as I’m getting into a song like the excellent “Le Samourai” (somebody has impeccable taste in French gangster films), I slam into the brick wall of silence. I'm waiting four or five seconds for the next hammer to fall. <i>Summertime Blues</i> is only 11 minutes but the lag makes it feel twice as long sometimes.<br />But I do my best to overlook that because Limbs Bin make very choice drum machine-driven grind madness. It’s somewhere between the earliest <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2008/12/blastbeat-from-past-gigantic-brain.html">Gigantic Brain</a> material and <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/2012/06/panic-at-discography-agoraphobic.html">Agoraphobic Nosebleed</a> at their most cybernetically aggressive. The individual songs are fantastic and the drum machine is one of the best sounding I’ve ever heard. The drums just slam into your chest with a palpable force. At its best Limbs Bin just about leaves you gasping for breath from concussive force.<br />But grind is an apex predator that has to constantly keep moving in search of prey. Lag is its only known rival. If Limbs Bin could go back and retroactively excise the between song gaps on <i>Summertime Blues</i>, they would have a near flawless record on their hands. While my short attention span usually can’t handle a few seconds between songs, the individual tunes Limbs Bin have wired together from broken machinery and volcanic bile are strong enough on an individual basis that I still keep coming back for more.Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-53160317240755583252013-11-11T20:26:00.002-05:002013-11-11T20:26:22.551-05:00Good Reads: Eat the Worm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>The book: <i>Dune</i> by Frank Herbert</b></div>
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For all its accolades, <i>Dune</i>, in my opinion, epitomizes the difference between writing and storytelling. Frank Herbert thought up an amazing story, fascinating characters and a brilliantly detailed world. Unfortunately, the he was really deficient when it comes to the mechanics of writing. The point of view leaps from person to person every other paragraph and, given the immensely detailed universe and thick political intrigue, characters are left to narrate large blocks of the plot in droning masses of dialogue. That said, who wouldn’t want to ride a fucking sand worm? Solve math problems with a mentat? Or watch a spiced-up Guilt steersman pilot an interstellar freighter? Fear (of terrible writing) is the mindkiller.<br />
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<b>A representative passage:</b><br />
Aloud, he said: “You speak of a place where you cannot enter? This place which the Reverend Mother cannot face, show it to me.”<br />
She shook her head, terrified by the very thought.<br />
“Show it to me!” he commanded.<br />
“No!”<br />
But she could not escape him. Bludgeoned by the terrible force of him, she closed her eyes and focused inward—the direction-that-is-dark.<br />
Darkness and a wind out of nowhere.<br />
…<br />
Through it all threaded the realization that her son was the Kwisatz Haderach, the one who could be many places at once. He was the fact out of the Bene Gesserit dream. And the face gave her no peace.<br />
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<b>The album: <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/mourning%20the%20unknown"><i>Mourning the Unknown</i></a> by <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/sayyadina">Sayyadina</a></b><br />
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Sayyadina take their name from the caste of Fremen priestesses in <i>Dune</i>, so naturally their music is intrinsically linked to the novel in my mind. It doesn’t hurt that the Swedes aren’t afraid to bust out of grindcore’s narrow gore vs. politics lyrical confines and spread their philosophical wings a bit more, opining on life and our place in it. While <i>Mourning the Unknown</i> couches many of its metaphors in the chill of winter and the creak of ice, it’s not too hard a notion to transplant their lyrical isolation to the clean-swept sands of Arrakis.<br />
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<b>A representative song: “Stolen Identity.”</b><br />
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Like a lot of messianic literature, <i>Dune</i> struggles with the nature of fate, identity and the weight of people’s expectations and desire to bend power to their own ends. Sayyadina ably wrestle with the same themes on “Stolen Identity,” the excellent lead off track from <i>Mourning the Unknown</i>.<br />
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Stolen identity<br />
You took it all from me<br />
Obsessed with violence<br />
Obsessed with hate<br />
Never thinking<br />
Before it’s too late<br />
Now all that I can see<br />
Is revenge, finally<br />
Hatred and violence<br />
Controlling a fat<br />
Never thinking<br />
Before it’s too late<br />
Stolen identity<br />
You took it all from meAndrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-45414526574076515652013-11-08T19:39:00.001-05:002013-11-08T19:39:39.236-05:00High Priests of the Death Church: A Rudimentary Peni Retrospective<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<i>Nat informed me that “punk is not fashion, it’s an attitude.” I have heard this somewhere before. I must say I am relieved that both he and Greg take this view and will not be resorting to war-zone dress sense of many punks. Nat gleefully described the “corpse of punk” as having no life in it whatsoever, and it was this decayed grandeur of a fallen subculture which had so attracted him.</i></div>
<b>Nick Blinko<br /><i>The Primal Screamer</i><br />1995</b><br />
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<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/rudimentary%20peni">Rudimentary Peni</a> did not revolutionize punk rock. At least not in the sense that the band boasts a wave of imitators intent on stealing any hint of the English band’s psychologically unstable glamour and passing it off as their own. The trio of guitarist/vocalist/visionary Nick Blinko, bassist Grant Matthews and drummer Jon Greville is just too idiosyncratic and hermetic for such easy imitation and commoditization.<br />
But what the band has accomplished over its 30 year run is unrivaled in the annals of punk. When too many other punks celebrate their semi-centennial birthdays with sad trips around the nostalgic circuit (is there anything more pitifully un-punk than the very existence of such a nostalgia circuit?) or <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-court-rules-against-greg-ginn-in-black-flag-lawsuit-20131011,0,4793900.story#axzz2jpDnSLGh">filing lawsuits against former friends</a>, Rudimentary Peni unexpectedly pop back up a couple times a decade to drop yet another immaculate EP’s worth of new material that builds on the morbid visions they first laid out in 1981 without recourse to rehashing their (wilted) salad days.<br />
Unique among the restless waves of politically-minded crust punks that roamed England in the early 1980s, Rudimentary Peni, while certainly political, filtered their diatribes through Blinko’s nightmarish insights and intricate artwork to set themselves well outside the circle of their peers. Rudimentary Peni songs, practically from the very outset, were psychologically rich meditations on death, decay, social oppression and mental upheaval that resonated far beyond the glut of bands who just tried to provoke and shock with cheap frights.<br />
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<i>One picture was particularly engrossing: a vortex of violent volutes, with voodoo babies and foetuses banging their heads against brick walls. Some of these offspring looked far too intelligent, like mad professors, but this illusion was caused by their circular spectacle-like eyes and high embryonic foreheads.</i><br />
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Rudimentary Peni, born from Blinko and Greville’s avant-synthesizer band The Magits, set out to <a href="http://www.pissinapod.com/#/mrr/4534428089">blend together English greats like Discharge, The Damned, Wire and Slaughter and the Dogs</a> but transcended their influences from the outset, releasing a pair of EPs in 1981 that stood outside the crust punk tropes that were prevalent at the time. Their eponymous debut was a dervish of minute-long diatribes that skewed Matthews’ anarcho leanings through Blinko’s Heironymus Bosch aesthetic. The result was a brand of punk that was darker and more otherworldly than anything that came before or has limped along after. Barely out of high school, Blinko was developing a sophisticated musical assault that blended deceptively simple riffing with a constantly shifting, schizophrenic cavalcade of vocal styles that mutated to fit the demands of each song. Matthews’ burbling bass was the pulsing heart that set time for Greville’s smashing and crashing.<br />
Follow up EP <i>Farce</i> was a bit of a step back. Produced and released by members of Crass, <i>Farce </i>sacrificed some of Rudimentary Peni’s idiosyncrasy to offer something more in keeping with what their peers were doing. Matthews’ politics took more prominence, nakedly delivered without Blinko’s skewing eye to wrap them in layers of demented imagery. Even though it’s probably the weakest link in Rudimentary Peni’s uncommonly strong discography, it still flashes bits of the band’s trademark wit songs like “Only Human,” which subverts the empty cliché into a tale of the sole survivor of an alien invasion. Even when they tried to fit in with their peers, Rudimentary Peni still steadfastly stood at the fringes.<br />
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<i>As to the music itself, I could not suffer a great deal. Most of it is cacophonous. There is a lot of screaming by Nat; a bit scary, but nothing like the primal therapy aberrations, thankfully. Some passages would be unique were it not for a slight fleeting resemblance to the most extreme moments from the canon of that deceased, eccentric English composer Cornelius Cardew. However, it mostly sticks to a rigid and very rapid common-time beat, with Greg and Jim revealed as reasonably competent musicians. Nat just adds volume and bluster with distorted musica in diabola guitar and growling vocals, wrought with the occasional weird whispered overdub: like speaking in tongues, wrought with primitive studio trickery. It is apocalyptic music. This is doubtless why it has had a minor appeal. It is basic, but genuinely eerie.</i><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2ZIUvjmOkJs/Un2DRTJp9JI/AAAAAAAADnU/CdkRR5cCfeA/s1600/death+church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="315" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2ZIUvjmOkJs/Un2DRTJp9JI/AAAAAAAADnU/CdkRR5cCfeA/s320/death+church.jpg" width="320" /></a><i><b>Death Church</b></i><br />
<b>1983</b><br />
With two successful studio efforts to their credit, Rudimentary Peni made their full length debut in 1983 with their most popular and probably best all around effort, <i>Death Church</i>. It would be the fullest blending of Matthews and Blinko’s visions, an album that seethes its politics in the black bile of apocalyptic visions, a nightmare menagerie of veganism (“carnivores are flesh tombstones”), punk sellouts (“Rotten to the Core”), failed relationships (“Blissful Myth,” “Love is Not”) and suffocating religious oppression (“Army of Jesus”). In between Blinko belted whacked out masterpieces like “Cloud Song,” “When You Are a Martian Church” and “Vampire State Building” that seemed unmoored from any conventional reality shared by the bulk of humanity. On the whole, <i>Death Church</i> is a slower overall effort, operating at a dream pace, everything mired in slow motion nightmare sloth. The guitars on <i>Death Church</i> are a wonderful slurry of largely indecipherable noise, and that really allows you to appreciate just how much Matthews’ bass drives the melody in songs like “1/4 Dead.” It’s probably limiting to think of <i>Death Church</i> as a punk record. It’s Rudimentary Peni’s first leap outside of genre constraints into the new realm of death rock they’d come to embody.<br />
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<i>He is persevering with guitar. His younger brother is offering him musical advice but he only accepts perverse snatches of music theory. Tritones – the infamous “Devil’s Tone” – are a particular obsession. He retunes the guitar to his own desires. The neighbors don’t seem to mind this, but do take exception to the occasional wild vocal improvisations which are liberally sprinkled with screams.</i><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NZkE7vki9Aw/Un2DQzvta4I/AAAAAAAADnM/t3z1TQH18yI/s1600/cacophony.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NZkE7vki9Aw/Un2DQzvta4I/AAAAAAAADnM/t3z1TQH18yI/s320/cacophony.jpg" width="320" /></a><i><b>Cacophony</b></i><br />
<b>1987</b><br />
After a four year hiatus during which Matthews battled cancer, Rudimentary Peni roared back with H.P. Lovecraft love letter <i>Cacophony</i>. Blinko has about 100 of the best voices in punk rock and he put each and every one on display on this fragmentary, schizophrenic emulation of Lovecraft’s cosmic oeuvre. The racket on <i>Cacophony</i> can only be loosely considered songs in the traditional sense because they lack anything that ties them to traditional song structure. Instead, they’re slivers of chaotic noise that carom from one bombastic aside to the next. Each song seems to occupy its own pocket universe from farcical sendups of Lovecraft’s life through doggerel poetry and sunset visions of wondrous cities only half glimpsed in dream realms that are clandestine conduits to the play realms of forgotten eldritch gods who wile away the life of the universe in revelries that would blight the sanity of the mortal mind. It all makes <i>Cacophony</i> a confounding effort but certainly one of the most original albums ever set to tape. It perfectly embodies Lovecraft’s blend of purple prose and sense of wonder in the face of an incomprehensible and indifferent universe.<br />
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<i>Nat is beginning to accept the fact that his doom-laden emotions will never fully disappear. With more work, however, we can hope to lessen their domination of his personality. Naturally, he finds it rather dubious to desire to dispel something which has been so large a part of him throughout his life. He tends toward the light but darkness pulls him back. I wish I could give him a pill that would provide the thrills and insight of his love of death, whilst simultaneously freeing him from the threat that it poses to his life. Such a pill, sadly, does not exist, and psychology favours all-pervasive healthy normalcy over morbid unwholesomeness, however visionary it might be.</i><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fkAEuPdvwps/Un2DTaI2EdI/AAAAAAAADn0/0xzSNERQFDI/s1600/pope+adrian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="315" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fkAEuPdvwps/Un2DTaI2EdI/AAAAAAAADn0/0xzSNERQFDI/s320/pope+adrian.jpg" width="320" /></a><i><b>Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric</b></i><br />
<b>1995</b><br />
Part of Rudimentary Peni’s mystique is the lack of solid information on the band and how they operate. Take for instance the rumors that Blinko has been periodically hospitalized for severe psychotic breaks from reality, including rumors that he once fancied himself to be a long forgotten shadow pope. That experience allegedly gave birth to <i>Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric</i>. This may be the toughest album in Rudimentary Peni’s entire discography to digest. It seems actively listener-hostile in some aspects. It boasts the longest songs in Rudimentary Peni’s entire catalog, but those songs are often maddeningly repetitive nursery rhymes imported from the band’s gloom-struck alternate dimension and mired in a medicated sloth. Back behind the songs, the bastardized Latin phrase “Papus Adrianas” runs in a constant loop for the entire album’s runtime. But the repetition is intended to mirror the fixation of the psychologically delusional, an audio interpretation of madness and compulsion and the way they can grind a life to a halt.<br />
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<i>He does seem to have a lot of pent-up anger that comes out during his writing and playing of “songs.” Indeed, the very idiom he uses indicates this. Punk, after all, is a music of hatred and destruction, but it is still <b>music</b>, i.e. a statement of hope not pessimism. Nat does not see it as an adequate catharsis. Indeed, he does not believe in catharsis. He does believe in some things: evocation of certain moods—predominantly bizarre—in his lyrics and drawings.</i><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wgfep9H032I/Un2DR2xN3JI/AAAAAAAADnc/f2Jz54gMHRA/s1600/echoes+of+angish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wgfep9H032I/Un2DR2xN3JI/AAAAAAAADnc/f2Jz54gMHRA/s320/echoes+of+angish.jpg" width="320" /></a><i><b>Echoes of Anguish</b></i><br />
<b>1998</b><br />
After the baroque indulgence of <i>Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric</i>, Rudimentary Peni pivoted in the other direction, releasing <i>Echoes of Anguish</i>, the first of several EPs emphasizing shorter songs and tightly wound musical hooks. With <i>Echoes of Anguish</i> Blinko thought he’d take a shovel and dig his own grave, just to lie in it and get a sense of how death would fit him. It’s less an album experience than it is a relentless memento mori intent on ruining your day with endless admonitions to contemplate your impending mortality. Death has always haunted the wings of Rudimentary Peni’s work, but this time they invite the Reaper to tea and reminisce like old war buddies catching up after a separation of years. Memories decay and bodies fail, but Rudimentary Peni sound resigned to, even relieved by, the prospect of imminent dissolution. <br />
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<i>Nat and Greg continue working out new songs and practicing their initial efforts with Jim once a week or fortnight. There is some dissension within the band as to just how well-polished their pieces should become. They do not feel that they are being true to their punk ideals on one hand, but on the other none of them are keen on playing live concerts which, I am given to understand are the natural habitat of the punk band. However, they are not, they claim, a punk band as such, and they are more than a little apprehensive as to what real punks will make of them.</i><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EGrKjj-N-y0/Un2DT2ZNfWI/AAAAAAAADn8/-_uWhTtWaQs/s1600/underclass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="318" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EGrKjj-N-y0/Un2DT2ZNfWI/AAAAAAAADn8/-_uWhTtWaQs/s320/underclass.jpg" width="320" /></a><i><b>The Underclass</b></i><br />
<b>2000</b><br />
With <i>The Underclass</i>, Rudimentary Peni gave a bit more leeway to Matthews’ overt political bile, but they did so without degenerating into eye rolling crust punk diatribes. When Rudimentary Peni casts its eye on the state of politics, it assesses the systemic forces that hold down portions of the populace rather than pissing and moaning about individual actions. So “ No Other Truth” informs that there is “no other truth but power” while “Captive of Atrophy” calls society a “collection of empty cells” and assures the forces that be that they are “the crumbling walls of our prison.” It’s an almost uplifting message of individual autonomy from a band that could famously find the gloom in a sunny spring day. And there’s gloom aplenty. While <i>The Underclass</i> may be more overt in its politics, there is still plenty of trademark mopery clouding the proceedings. “Essence” reminds you that “being within is a lie” and “Bequest” asks whether your parents were really doing you any favors with this whole existence thing since you’re just going to die miserable anyway. Now there’s the Rudimentary Peni we all know and love.<br />
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<i>The patient was tall and thin, slightly bent over, with short but wild black hair erupting over a high dome-like forehead. In fact, his head seemed too heavy for his neck to support and he held it to one side, virtually resting it on one shoulder. His eyes were very piercing yet somehow old. They were almost as black as his hair; an impression intensified by the glowing whiteness of his face. Dressed entirely in black he was on the darker, Gothic side of Romantic.</i><br />
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<b>2004</b><br />
From the first notes of “One and All,” <i>Archaic</i> feels more strident and stubborn than some other Rudimentary Peni efforts. There’s an almost martial stride to it all as they press on through the depression and suicidal ideation that they affectionately refer to as life. <i>Archaic</i> is a relentlessly negative album and Rudimentary Peni glower their way through “Suffer,” “Mercy of Slumber" [spoiler alert: there is none], “Farewell Tomorrow” and “Rehearsal for Mortality.” But where other Rudimentary Peni albums are content to wallow in accumulated miseries, there’s almost a steely resolve at the core of <i>Archaic</i>. The slashing, staccato guitars and unrelenting drums give a sense of unflappable resilience what with the noted rigidity of the English’s upper labrum and all. The prospect of sudden, unescapable misery, misfortune and bodily dissolution are never that far over Rudimentary Peni’s horizon, but on <i>Archaic</i> it just doesn’t feel like today is the day they give in.<br />
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<i>I told him he should feel very proud of the cover artwork. It depicts a miniscule filigree of cretinous creatures, headless popes, demoniac archangels, angelic demoniacals, necrophiliac nuns etc. etc. Many heads are severed or seem to exist independently of bodies; each one is depicted screaming. The screams are not those of the twentieth century to familiarised by Munch and Bacon, but instead they hark back down the generations to primeval times in a far more convincing manner.</i><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-skTYtlhHXm4/Un2DSxk-AXI/AAAAAAAADns/O-SZl_ZygRc/s1600/no+more+pain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-skTYtlhHXm4/Un2DSxk-AXI/AAAAAAAADns/O-SZl_ZygRc/s320/no+more+pain.jpg" width="312" /></a><i><b>No More Pain </b></i><br />
<b>2008</b><br />
<a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/no%20more%20pain"><i>No More Pain</i></a> is probably the most intellectual of Rudimentary Peni’s albums with its obvious nods to T.S. Elliot and a cover of Pachbel’s Canon in E. It also boasts their most whimsical song in the sing-songy “Doodelbug Baby.” There are not a lot of bands, particularly those that came out of punk, that continue to push themselves and make challenging music nearly 30 years into their career, but <i>No More Pain</i>, while expounding on Rudimentary Peni’s familiar topics, does see the band mixing up their own formula. It makes <i>No More Pain</i> one of the most distinctive EPs in their prolific pack of short players. It’s been five years with nary a peep from Rudimentary Peni aside from plans to reissue portions of their back catalog. If <i>No More Pain</i> is the band’s tombstone, we at least can take cheer they went out at peace. It took them three full lengths and six EPs to finally achieve their sublime fantasy on <i>No More Pain</i>. The trip was well worth the investment.<br />
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<i><br />Nat and Greg egg each other on within their insular world. Like retarded twins, they spend every evening tucked away in Greg’s bedroom poring over the history and present forms of their chosen subculture with the intensity of scholars or historians. Why, what is punk but a living fossil?</i>Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-26128427911608076882013-11-04T18:59:00.003-05:002013-11-04T18:59:46.770-05:00Good Reads: Ewige Blumenkraft!<b>The book: <i>The Illuminatus! Trilogy</i></b><br />
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Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson put the voodoo into economics with their occult libertarian opus <i>The Illuminatus! Trilogy</i>, which blends together just enough fractured history, complete bullshit, libertarian broadsides and kinky sex to be confuzzle and amaze the most burned out acid casualty from the ’60s and anyone else with a biting sense of humor. Robert and Robert’s scifi whatsis touchstone is a mordant mix of spy shlock, <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i>, John Dillinger, the Bavarian Illuminati, cheeky deux ex machina, Anton LaVey’s fake satanic hustle and Lovecraftian Nazi zombie death apocalypse at a music festival that skips through time, space and point of view in a schizophrenic mirror of the fractured 20th Century. There’s a reason why this might be one of the greatest books ever written. Fnord.<br />
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<b>A representative passage:</b><br />
There was a silence that seemed to stretch into some long hall of near-Buddhist emptiness—George recognized the glimpse <i>at last!</i>, into the Void all his acidhead friend had tried to describe—and then he remembered that was not the trip Hagbard was pushing him toward. But the silence lingered as a quietness of spirit, a calm in the tornado of those last few days, and George found himself ruminating with total dispassion , without hope or dread or smugness or guilt; if not totally without ego, or in full <i>darshana,</i> at least without the inflamed and voracious ego that usually either leaped forward or shrunk back from naked fact. He contemplated his memories and was unmoved, objective, at peace. He thought of blacks and woman and of their subtle revenges against their Masters, acts of sabotage that could not be recognized clearly as such because they took the form of acts of obedience; he thought of the Shoshone Indians and their crude joke, so similar to the jokes of oppressed peoples everywhere; he saw, suddenly, the meaning of Mardi Gras and the Feast of Fools and the Saturnalia and the Christmas Office Party and the other limited, permissible, structured occasions on which Freud’s Return of the Repressed was allowed; he remembered all the times he had gotten his own back against a professor, a high school principal, a bureaucrat, or, further back, his own parents, by waiting for the occasion when, by doing exactly what he was told, he could produce some form of minor catastrophe. He saw a world of robots, marching rigidly in the paths laid down for them from above, and each robot partly alive, partly human, waiting its chance to drop its own monkey wrench into the machinery. He saw, finally, why everything in the world seemed to work wrong and the Situation Normal was All Fucked Up. “Hagbard,” he said slowly. “I think I get it. Genesis is exactly backwards. Our troubles started from obedience, not disobedience. And humanity is not yet created.”<br />
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<b>The album: <i>Violent Resignation: The Great American Teenage Suicide Rebellion 1992-1998</i> by <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/in%2Fhumanity">In/Humanity</a></b><br />
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South Carolina’s In/Humanity lived to fuck with crust punk convention as they proselytized for the obviously-fake-but-still-kinda-serious concepts of “occultonomy,” “smashism” and “emo-violence.” In/Humanity’s rangy noise mixed crust punk politicking with cheesy Satanism, Charles Manson mockery and a goofball rip on the occult and esoteric to advance their goals of anarchism and personal autonomy at all costs. And with all that, their posthumous compilation demonstrates they had a deft hand at bending raw punk noise to their bidding as well. Death couldn’t even keep the band back as key members morphed into <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/guyana%20punch%20line">Guyana Punch Line</a> to continue their mordant assault on mainstream mediocrity with a psychologically skewed slant on society’s ills.<br />
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<b>A representative song: “Emo Violence Generation”</b><br />
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People try to put us down, the short sighted never see. What’s that emo violence sound? A sound for you and me! Occultonomist grips like strychnine on your back. The beast unleashed bears[sic] its teeth, now ready to attack! EMO VIOLENCE! EMO VIOLENCE!Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8423175970439780764.post-38603841374691962742013-10-30T18:41:00.001-04:002013-10-30T18:41:10.156-04:00Hostile Carbon Units: Standing on a Floor of Bodies Invite You to Their Creepshow<i>It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.</i><br /><br /><b><i>Apocalypse Now</i><br />1979</b><br />
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<br />Horror is the central tenet of <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/standing%20on%20a%20floor%20of%20bodies">Standing on a Floor of Bodies</a>’ grisly grind. Not the cheap corn syrup spray of lazy goregrind and generic slasher films, but the soul crushing starkness of naked terror and unsettling atmosphere. Musical mastermind Mike Stitches wants to be that adrenal itch beneath your epidermis, the prickling hair at the back of your neck as you walk down an unlit street on a moonless night.<br />“The atmosphere in any convincing horror film is so undeniably massive and encompassing and I've always wanted to capture that in another way,” Stiches said. “Whether I've been successful at this is rather subjective. Depends mostly on the listener and what s/he considers scary. I've always been drawn to movies like <i>Carrie</i> (original), <i>Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> (original), <i>House of the Devil</i>, <i>Calvaire</i> and <i>The Conjuring</i>, where the mood is centered around isolation, darkness, tension, claustrophobia and hopelessness. You just know when Leatherface appears for the first time in <i>Texas Chainsaw</i> that his first victim is beyond fucked at that point. Or when Jack Torrance starts whaling at the bathroom door with his axe. Those moments beg to be matched musically.”<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">Die! Die! My Darling!</span><br />
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<br />There’s something undeniably cinematic about Standing on a Floor of Bodies’ unique blend of bass-driven grind and the perfectly matched murder scene visuals, which look like they were swiped from the cops’ cold case files or an Unsane photoshoot. Stitches and his wife, musical accomplice and all around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_girl">survivor girl</a> Bvnny specialize in 45 second fright fests that run the gamut of fight or flight responses on albums like the nightmarish <i>Sacrilegious and Culturally Deficien</i>t. It’s a match made in matrimony and the sanguinary aisle of your local videorama.<br />“In terms of working on a project like this, it's good to work with someone who understands the overall intention and purpose, which she definitely does. So, I don't have to spend all this extra time throwing movies, records and books at her. She's seen all that stuff, which is a relief,” Stitches said. “Now every time we experience something new and interesting, it's usually together. Or if I find something on my own, I usually show her right away. I'll never forget when we watched <i>You're Next</i>. We were at this theater in the desert in the middle of the day and there were probably like 20 people in the place. We laughed our asses off the whole time at these yuppies just getting decimated. Before, I'd usually have to wait for a movie like that to come out on DVD, rent it, watch it by myself and then sample it after a long day at work because nobody I knew at the time would be into it. With Bvnny, she'll usually grab me and be like, ‘Dude, when this comes out, you GOTTA sample that part’ or ‘that would make an awesome album cover.’”<br />Adding Bvnny to the mix on <i>Sacrilegious and Culturally Deficient</i> gave Stitches an extra sounding board for the music as well as let him farm out the lyrics, something he’d tackled in prior band <a href="http://grindandpunishment.blogspot.com/search/label/thousandswilldie">thousandswillide</a> but never really considered his strong point. <br />
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<span style="color: red;">The Sound of My Voice</span><br />
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While she’s the band’s dedicated lyricist, Bvnny gets extra assistance from the duo’s choice taste in samples to bolster their aesthetic. The samples are integral to developing Standing on a Floor of Bodies’ creepy crawly vibe and Bvnny and Stitches have been known to abuse their Netflix privileges in search of inspiring sounds.<br />“Samples are an on-going process and can be totally random. Bvnny and I will be watching a movie and sometimes won't send back to the DVD to Netflix until I've picked through almost every scene, if it's a really good source,” Stitches said. “The manipulation process is more dependent upon the song writing, of course. It just takes time to figure out what's going to work well. What usually happens is I'll suddenly come up with a few ideas out of nowhere, finally get home and program the drums, record bass tracks over them, throw them on my iPod and listen to my own demos for months before actually recording anything officially. This give me a chance to think things over and make adjustments where needed. Most of these demos don't have any sampling involved until I'm just about ready to record, others will be written around samples. It all kinda depends on what we're working with at the time.”<br />Given that he puts that much thought an effort into the sound of Standing on a Floor of Bodies, it’s no surprise that Stitches is equally meticulous about finding a visual that perfectly matches the racket.<br />“Music and artwork on an album can work so powerfully together. I think if you're an intelligent musician that doesn't make the effort to merge those two somehow, you're not really applying yourself. Because a record can have a huge impact the listener, even more so than most people you meet,” he said. “There's always going to be some shithead who hassles you to digest 50 brand new bands that all want to musically, lyrically and visually recreate Napalm Death’s <i>Scum</i>. Nobody needs to listen to that guy. The desired result should be ‘holy shit, this is interesting. Where do I get more?’ Not, ‘okay, cool, I got yet another punk by numbers record with a landfill or mass grave on the cover.’ Find what fucking knocks the wind out of you musically and enjoy it for yourself and with anyone who likes it as much as you do.”<br />And it’s not like Stitches will ever lack for inspiration.<br />“I've still got probably hundreds of samples from movies that haven't ended up on any song on any release (yet),” he said. “There's some days where all I do is sample movies and play around with layers and layers of noise.”Andrew Childershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09817760227836086070noreply@blogger.com1