Grind and Punishment

Weekend Punk Pick: Blondie

2012-01-29T08:11:00.001-05:00

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

You Grind...But Why?: Population Reduction

2012-01-27T18:53:00.003-05:00

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

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

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

Compiling Autumn: The Inalienable Book

2012-01-26T19:58:00.010-05:00

This is why punctuation is important, people.

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

Compiling Autumn Preview: The Old Ball and Chang

2012-01-26T19:55:00.005-05:00

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

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

G&P Review: Slaughter Slashing

2012-01-25T07:42:00.002-05:00

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

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

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Week 2 Results/The 3-6 Matchups

2012-01-23T19:23:00.002-05:00

I'm just gonna go ahead and say up front that I hate all of you. Every last one of you ingrate bastards. I know I deliberately rigged this round to have some of the most interesting head to heads. But damn, people. Seriously? Let's see if you can figure out why I'm so speechless.

Here's the 2-7 results:

The Old Guard
Though the anti-Carcass crowd came on strong early, Bill Steer ultimately triumphed over Mick Harris 10-5.

The Innovators
No surprise that Scott Hull got the first shut out of the competition, blowing out Pingdum with a perfect 15-0.

The Punks
324's Shinji now rates a 12-3 on the Misery Index after getting stomped by Heritage.

The Technicians
Rainwater by 8-7 over Marton.

Anyway, the updated brackets can be viewed here.
So, on to the 3-6 matchups. Not that you deserve them. As always, you've got until Sunday.

The Old Guard
3. Gurn (Brutal Truth) v. 6. Toshimi (S.O.B.)
Drug crazed grind freak v. sabotaged organized barbarian.

The Innovators
3. Talarczyk (Nasum) v. 6. Papirmollen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU)
A Scandinavian smackdown between the patron saint of modern grind and Norway's master of both cornholes and wormholes.

The Punks
3. Richardson (Kill the Client) v. 6. Beau (Insect Warfare)
Who is king of all Texas? This may be more divisive than the outcome of the Alamo.

The Technicians
3. Burke (Lethargy/Sulaco/Brutal Truth) v. 6. Unks/Nowoczynski (Creation is Crucifixion)
Burke has been tearing shit with little fanfare for 20 years. Creation is Crucifixion were 20 years ahead of their time.

Weekend Punk Pick: The Dead Boys

2012-01-22T08:54:00.000-05:00

Ohio's only redeeming feature, the Dead Boys.

You Grind...But Why?: Hip Cops

2012-01-20T20:52:00.002-05:00

Will BSP is a grindcore renaissance man, juggling the (sadly defunct) Hip Cops, awesome Extreme Noise Terror name-checking Bullshit Propaganda Records and the excellent Don't Be Swindle blog/zine. It's an intense schedule for an intense guy. But Will's the kinda dude whose whole life seems to be caught up in a mosh.

"There's something different about me from most people I know," Will said. "I don't know if it's a problem or a benefit. Most people would feel good to be relaxed or well-rested, but I never stop. I purposely sleep less hours per night than the average person, and leap out of bed ready to do 10 things at once before the sun rises. I like to listen to different music on multiple stereos at the same time. I work three jobs. Everything is in my face, all of the time with the volume on life cranked to the max. When I discovered grindcore, everything clicked. The usual punk and hardcore was never quite fast enough, so that it was on par with the speed that I approached life. Sometimes the music just keeps up with me, and other times it's like a mental bulldozer while I stare at the wall without a thought on my mind five minutes before falling asleep. A slate-cleaner, if you will. I just got lucky that the lyrics that often accompany grindcore also fit the worldview that I already have in regards to social and political issues, sweetening the pie. That's why I grind."

G&P Review: Coche Bomba

2012-01-18T20:09:00.002-05:00

Coche Bomba
Vectores de la Muerte
Revulsion
Whatever evolutionary detour hardcore has taken throughout its existence, polyglot French punks Coche Bomba were happy to come along for the ride. Their discography record, collecting all of the band's output from 1995 through 1997, is an explosion of screaming, fastcore-to-grindcore beats, mic-passing choruses, the occasional whoa-oh-oh ("TRBNG") and even some halfassed reggae ("Le Sangre de Christo") just for good measure. These audio automotive explosives even reach back deep into punk's history when it was still recognizably anchored in swinging rock 'n' roll ("La Patria Es") and Ramones-style buzzsaw ("Tout de Suite").
That's a lot of different elements coming through Coche Bomba's corpus over 45 songs recorded over a three year period, and, ultimately, those elements are notable for how they accent the band's fairly standard Heresy-core. So don't expect them to explode your notions of hardcore/proto-grind despite their admonition to take these 45 songs and "annoy people//play loud." I'd be lying if I didn't say a million other bands were playing this exact same style, and Coche Bomba sit comfortably in the middle of the pack.
However, Revulsion did a nice job putting this package together, which features artwork like They Live glasses gone horribly wrong or a photo essay on Neo Tokyo after Akira came back to town. It's a nice cartoonish post-apocalyptic vibe when so many of their contemporaries are still ripping off Discharge's nuclear test and war zone style. So overall it's a cool wrapping around a fairly average band, but Coche Bomba can scratch that hardcore itch if you come across a copy somewhere.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Week 1 Results/The 2-7 Matchups

2012-01-16T08:14:00.001-05:00

Ok, so, class, what did we learn from the first week of voting?

The Old Guard
We learned the ratio of people who love grind and people who love Repulsion is essentially 1:1. The Michigan gravediggers win handily 10-1.

The Innovators
In a squeaker, Human Remains triumphed 6-5. You did your damnedest, Strife. You almost got Kapo over the hump.

The Punks
I was already worried about the gender disparity at work before we started, but now the only chick in the contest is already out as Phobia beat Cretin 7-3.

The Technicians
I don't think anybody is surprised Matsubara triumphed so easily. Even Page, good guy that he is, voted against himself. Japan's finest won 11-1.

As always, the updated brackets are available here.

So that sets us up for the 2-7 matchups. Here's this week's head to head. Once again, you've got until Sunday to argue your side.

The Old Guard
2. Steer (Carcass/Napalm Death) v. 7. Harris (Righteous Pigs/Defecation/Napalm Death)
Two Napalmers square off head to head. Each also has a significant repertoire outside of grind's first family. Who does it better?

The Innovators
2. Hull (ANb/Pig Destroyer/Anal Cunt) v. 7. Pingdum (Total Fucking Destruction)
Drum machines, nightmares and gay jokes. There's not much Hull hasn't riffed over. Flipside, Pingdum is the ringmaster of weird who gives substance and direction to the daydreams Hoak deems out of bonds for Brutal Truth.

The Punks
2. Heritage (Assuck) v. 7. Shinji (324)
Good ol' American ass beating squares off against a uniquely Japanese take on crustcore.

The Technicians
2. Marton (Discordance Axis) v. 7. Rainwater (Noisear/Kill the Client)
Will Marton grind forever alone as the best guitarist of the bunch or has an upstart weaned on his works overtaken the master?

Weekend Punk Pick: Subhumans

2012-01-15T08:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, it's that Subhumans this time (not to be confused with that other Subhumans). I've been binging on old British '80s punk lately and outside of Rudimentary Peni, I can't think of a better example. Strident, scathing and uncompromising, Subhumans were a political timebomb of anti-religious sentiment, animal rights sloganeering and two fingers in the air anarchy. They were also pretty prescient, predicting the rise of the surveillance state. After a brief sojourn through the ska wilderness of Citizen Fish, the Subs are back and spitting more bile.

You Grind...But Why?: Dephosphorus

2012-01-13T20:07:00.002-05:00

Panos Agoros has been a Greek grind stalwart with one foot in the strictly traditional (Straighthate) and the other stepping out to the cosmos (Dephosphorus), but when you settle down and ask the singer what keeps him grinding, it's like getting a snippet of a personal diary in musical form. Also, turns out the guy has some impeccable taste in music as well.

"I love listening and playing grindcore because this genre is the apotheosis of rhythm, and rhythm is what I like the most in music – more than melody!" Agoros said. "There is also something deeply paroxysmic about it that numbs my senses, deconstructing my perception then putting the pieces back together. I love the way the genre has evolved, matching my evolution as a person and music lover. In the '90s I was listening a lot to Napalm Death and Brutal Truth, then Discordance Axis’ The Inalienable Dreamless came crushing down on me in the early '00s. It was one of these rare highlights as a listener when you discover some new music and feel with certainty that is what you were waiting for but didn’t know it existed! Finally, Discordance Axis’ and Nasum’s mostly screamed vocals fit with my personal taste and made me realize that this kind of vocals is amongst the most expressive and tortured ever to come out of a human throat… As Cornell West once wrote: 'Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.' "

G&P Review: Brutal Truth

2012-01-11T20:31:00.004-05:00

Brutal Truth
End Time
Relapse
The Official Brutal Truth Album Reviewers' Guide (TM), a cheat sheet for lazy fucks like me, lists plenty of adjectives I can mindlessly bleat out for any new Brutal Truth album: innovative, unconventional, challenging, idiosyncratic, unorthodox. One you're not likely to see too often is formulaic, but that may be the most apt for End Time.
Formulaic is not inherently a bad thing, but we should at least acknowledge when the template is being followed and End Time certainly feels very familiar. Like Evolution Through Revolution before it, it's an amalgam of everything that made Need to Control and Sounds of the Animal Kingdom click, just distilled and smooshed together. You start with your lead-soled album opener "Malice" (see also: "Collapse"), blast a bit before you get a midpoint noisefucker in "Warm Embrace of Poverty" (recommended for fans of the first half of "Blue World," "Iron Lung" and "Semi Automatic Carnation"), grind a bit more and close it out with not one but two more doomed out farewells "Drink Up" and the superfluous, overly long "Control Room" (familiar to connoisseurs of "Prey," "Crawlspace" and "Grind Fidelity").
While that may sound negative initially, Brutal Truth rise above their self-imposed constraints to deliver what is easily the best sounding album of their career, regardless of era and lineup. End Time is all gnarled whorls and canines cracking gristle, powered by Erik Burke's dynamic Lethargian riffing style, which may be more engaging than Gurn's (there, I said it). He brings all new dynamics and shadings to Brutal Truth, fractal pools rather than jagged edges. And when the band does blast their way through comfort food grinders "All Work and No Play," "20 Bag" or "Addicted" it's with the assurance of veterans who don't have time to fuck around with half assed efforts.
Overall, I think I really enjoy End Time, but it would be nice to bust out those familiar adjectives again. Maybe next album if we all survive the end times.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: The 1-8 Matchups

2012-01-09T15:42:00.002-05:00

Ok, you bitched, you moaned, you cajoled, you wheedled and you whined. The end result is a stronger faceoff structure. So now it's time to drop the gloves.
Just like the last outing, I'll post the matchups each week and you tell me who should win and, just as importantly, why. In the event of a tie or a really close decision or just because I'm a total dick and I feel like pissing in your eye, a well reasoned argument can carry the day.

So let's get down to it. You've got until Sunday to make your case.

The Old Guard
1. Olivo/Freeman (Repulsion) v. 8. Dickinson (Heresy/Unseen Terror)
Michigan grave robbers v. an English hardcore hooligan.

The Innovators
1. Procopio/Baglino (Human Remains) v. 8. Kapo (Swarrrm)
Unsung American innovators v. an artistic Japanese oddball. If Kapo loses, Perpetual Strife just might cry.

The Punks
1. Burda/McLachlan (Phobia) v. 8. Martinez (Cretin)
The premier punk duo v. the mistress of the grotesque.

The Technicians
1. Matsubara (GridLink/Mortalized/Hayaino Daisuki) v. 8. Page (Body Hammer/Robocop)
If Matsubara didn't exist, Studio Ghibli would have had to animate him. Page can make music out of toothbrushes and an electric fans. He's also a kick ass young guitarist.

Weekend Punk Pick: The Undertones

2012-01-08T09:11:00.001-05:00

This a simple pop punk tune so perfect it reportedly made John friggen Peel burst out in tears when he first heard it. Irish upstarts the Undertones grew up during the infamous Troubles, but rather than wallow in the chaos (leave that to Stiff Little Fingers), they turned to sometimes sarcastic, sometimes earnest pop in punk clothing as an escape. As a result they churned out pop confections so good they could make your most leather-n-spikes, be-mohawked punker sniffle with bittersweet teen nostalgia.

You Grind...But Why?: Wormrot

2012-01-06T19:39:00.002-05:00

Quite honestly, I don't care why Wormrot grind. I'm just eternally grateful that the Singaporean trio does (and that they're out of jail). From absolute unknowns three years ago, Arif, Rasyid and Fitri have become the standard bearers for traditional grind in the 21st Century. But to hear vocalist Arif tell it, grindcore really wasn't the plan when they got together. Luckily for us, Plan A didn't work out.

"We just love the adrenaline rush of the blast beats," Arif said. "Actually, our intended idea was to play something like death grind - gore grind a la Disgorge (Mexico). But it doesn't work out as Rasyid wasn't comfortable with the riffing or whatever. He's more into basic, straightforward punkish chords, whatever you call it. We're definitely and always a fan of grindcore and that's the closest other 'fast extreme' genre we can work on. We made the right choice. Always a fan of extreme pissed off noise. Everyone has gotta be comfortable with what they are doing. Fit was in a punk band back in the day, so it fits so perfectly and makes everything much easier. Over the years, we tend to learn and appreciate grindcore as we grew and never look back to what we were intended to be. We've been grinding proudly ever since."

Blast(beat) from the Past: Bloody Phoenix

2012-01-04T20:03:00.004-05:00

Bloody Phoenix
Death to Everyone
625 Thrash
2010
A spunky epigeneticist looking for an inside track on next year's Nobel Prize could throw the competition a curveball by sequencing drummer Michael Rarubin's DNA. Cuz I'm pretty sure dude is toting an extra arm tucked somewhere on his body or some other drumming-related mutation. That's the only reasonable explanation I can see for a guy who can roll a snare drum and smash a cymbal at the same time.
And Death to Everyone, Bloody Phoenix's second album (which eluded me all through 2010) is Rarubin's time to shine as he dominates songs like "No Conscience," which makes the case that maybe the dude's name should pop up in casual conversation more often when you're bandying around the best drummers in grindcore.
Not that the rest of the quartet is phoning it in. Two decades into a career that started with Excruciating Terror, I was floored to see Jerry Flores mix up the deck by stirring in bits of Neurosis, d-beat, Today is the Day and even some Killing Joke to his repertoire. The confluence makes this probably the strongest album in his unfuckwithable career. "Mast of Deception" is practically uplifting for all of its violence as it twines its way up an escalator guitar riff akin to Napalm Death's "When All is Said and Done."
Quivering vocal cord delivery system Aaron Ramos gets his Steve Austin on with the closing, eponymous song as he rants about the death of god with a single-mindedness you'd expect from one of Today is the Day's more violent revenge tracks.
This may have slipped through my fingers last year, but it's never too late to pay Bloody Phoenix their proper respect.

Through Silver in Bloody Phoenix

2012-01-04T19:59:00.002-05:00

I love that Bloody Phoenix mixed up their influences on second album Death to Everyone. Guitarist Jerry Flores is a grindcore old dog and it's cool to see him bust out a few new tricks.
That said...
...one of Bloody Phoenix's new influences sounded awfully...let's call it...familiar.
Let's start with opening number "Marching into a Bottomless Well." It's a wave of tolling bells, rolling and martial drums, implacable bass lurch and funereal guitars.

But doesn't it sound a lot like Neurosis' "Through Silver in Blood," opening song to the essential album of the same name. Same plod, similar tempo, same crushing chin shot.

Am I the only one hearing this?

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Guitarmageddon 2012

2012-01-02T08:00:00.038-05:00

It’s been far too long, hasn’t it?
If the Mayan kooks are more accurate than Harold Camping, we don't have much longer to live. So what better way to commemorate the end of the world as we know it than with a second bout of Grindcore Bracketology?
This time out, I’m asking you to pick the best guitarist grind has to offer and, unlike last time, I’m throwing the doors open to all eras past and present in search of the six stringer you think best typifies grind or has done the most to proselytize for the blastbeat lifestyle. As with the last go-round, I’ve arbitrarily selected 32 guitarists who I think best represent grindcore in four categories: The Old Guard, The Innovators, The Punks and The Technicians. We'll winnow each division down until the last men standing go head to head: Old Guard vs. Innovators; Punks vs. Technicians. Then the survivors go mano-a-mano (fingers-a-fingers?) for fretboard dominance.
I’ll kick off the voting next week. Meanwhile, pore over the list and let me know who needs to be added, deleted or reordered.
For the more visually inclined, you can peruse the upcoming matchups at Guitarmageddon.

The Old Guard
The Geezers of Grind (or, AARP-core as 206-Grind once brilliantly put it). Here are eight guitarists from that first and early second wave who were instrumental in defining what fast-hardcore-with-screaming would later be.

1. Matt Olivo/Aaron Freeman (Repulsion)
Matt Olivo is the protypical grindcore guitarist. His Slayer on a meth bender guitar stylings laid the foundation for pretty much everybody who would come after. Every guitarist who has riffed over a blastbeat has stolen a page from his playbook. [You've convinced me. Freeman gets his due too]

2. Bill Steer (Napalm Death/Carcass)
To grind over a single classic album is more than most guitarists will ever achieve, but Bill Steer was riffmaster general on two in a single year, shepherding both Carcass and Napalm Death to career highlights. What’s even more amazing is how different the two albums are, proving Steer was not just an innovator but a chameleon.

3. Brent “Gurn” McCarty (Brutal Truth)
Grindcore had barely taken its first few toddler tumbles when Brutal Truth were forcing it to run in new and unique directions. Brent “Gurn” McCarty’s frenzied, askew guitar curveballs were the perfect foundation for a band determined to dynamite musical preconceptions that had already grown stale. Through three albums with Brutal Truth, his playing grew increasingly abstract, avant-garde and unconventional. His playing is still instantly recognizable more than a decade after he retired.

4. Jesse Pintado (Terrorizer/Napalm Death/Resistant Culture)
No other grinder’s career has taken such a tragic arc as that of Jesse Pintado. From the stone classic of Terrorizer’s posthumous World Downfall, he jumped to Napalm Death in time to try to live up to the legacy of what many consider to be the band’s best album. His Napalm Death tenure was marked by the band’s meandering low point (though I’ll still sing the nostalgic praises of Utopia Banished, the most Terrorizer-ish of the post-Mick Harris albums). His unceremonious ouster from Napalm Death and the ill-starred Terrorizer reunion would have been a depressing epitaph were it not for his contribution to a great Resistant Culture album as well. Despite the ignominious end, Pintado’s earliest work earned him immortality.

5. Kurt Habelt (Siege)
At the time Siege were terrorizing Boston basement shows, grindcore didn’t even have a name. They were just punks kicking out the jams at terrifying speeds and Kurt Habelt was charged with keeping it up all in line. While drummer Rob Williams may get more acclaim for his contribution to the proto-blastbeat, Habelt wrote the riffs that just seemed to fit the hyperspeed hardcore freakouts.

6. G. Toshimi (S.O.B.)
Though S.O.B. helped invent grindcore, it was never enough to contain the organized – if sabotaged – Japanese punk barbarians. Evolving through thrashcore and a few questionable dalliances with experimental music, guitarist G. Toshimi kept things crusty and concise on classic albums like Gate of Doom. While defining grindcore, Toshimi et al also made sure the nascent noise wouldn’t box itself into too small of a space.

7. Mitch Harris (Righteous Pigs/Defecation/Napalm Death)
Napalm Death’s other Harris, Mitch got his start with Las Vegas’ Righteous Pigs, collaborated with his Napalmed namesake in Defecation, and yes, has been holding down the guitar fort in Napalm Death for the past two decades, providing a semblance of stability amid the rotating carousel of cast members. He’s a punky, metally performer who has quietly just done his thing with aplomb regardless of trends of collaborators.

8. Mitch Dickinson (Heresy/Unseen Terror)
Mitch Dickinson embodies grindcore’s earliest punk and hardcore roots, first with the seminal Heresy and then later tag-teaming with a drummer named Shane Embury and a sometime singer named Mick Harris (I know, it’s like having all the right pieces but putting them in the wrong order) in Unseen Terror. Nothing Dickinson ever did would ever wander too far from its Brit punk hardcore roots, which would always come blaring through his riffing. But as the originator and (as far as I can tell) sole purveyor of Garfield-core, the guy deserves a nod.

The Innovators
Some guys just aren't content to leave well enough alone. These new jacks shook up grind for the better, forcing their square pegs into the scene's round hole, often with explosive results.

1. Steve Procopio/Jim Baglino [Since I'm adding duos, Baglino needs a shout out too] (Human Remains)
Nobody before and nobody since has ever wrung the kinds of bizarre sounds out of their instruments as New Jersey’s Human Remains. Human Remains was just plain weird. Fifteen years after the band’s demise, people are just now beginning to hip to what guitarist Steve Procopio was up to with his six string shenanigans. Slanting, bouncing, unsettlingly askew, Human Remains lurked in the uncanny valley of death-grind. You think you know those instruments, but something just isn’t right. Where were any of us when Human Remains were laying down a template for the future?

2. Scott Hull (Agoraphobic Nosebleed/Pig Destroyer/Anal Cunt)
Scott Hull is the first true grindcore auteur. With Pig Destroyer, he draws from classic grind, Melvins insanity and unsettling atmospheres to cradle the insalubrious spirits being descanted by frontman J.R. Hayes. Hull writes Hellraiser riffs that can unsettle you on their own. Adding in Hayes’ nightmare fuel is only adding to the exquisite torture. If that weren’t enough to earn him some serious accolades (and it surely is), Hull also dragged the early Earache guitar sound into the modern era with Agoraphobic Nosebleed. He gave it a post-millennial sheen by pairing it with abused drum machines and frayed FX boxes, penning Ballardian odes to a fragmenting society.

3. Mieszko Talarczyk (Nasum)
Nasum were one of the first true 21st Century grindcore bands. While Mieszko Talarczyk’s influences were no secret, he developed a riffing style that seemed fresh and vibrant at a time when grind was in danger of going stale. His other innovation came from behind the mixing board where Talarczyk made sure that all the care and craft he put into his songwriting could be set off to maximum effect.

4. Richard Johnson (Enemy Soil/Drugs of Faith)
There has not been a facet of grind where Richard Johnson hasn’t made a contribution from mixing punk and drum machines with Enemy Soil through bringing the rock to the grind with Drugs of Faith. In between you can find him shredding tonsils and morals with Agoraphobic Nosebleed. From his earliest noise assaults, Johnson has grown as a master musical craftsman who knows a great hook is the backbone to a quality tune.

5. Eduardo Borja (Maruta)
Maruta’s guitar tone is infinitely recognizable – Eduarda Borja’s slouching, slurring scrape is completely unique among their grind-violence peers. That tone is pressed into service lugging along some of the sickest modern grind misery. That tone has so much definition and physical presence that In Narcosis was one of the heaviest albums not to feature a bass.

6. Papirmollen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU)
Norwegian nihilist Papirmollen could have easily taken a run for the top of The Punks for his crusted, crepuscular work with Parlamentarist Sodomi. But anyone who astral projected to the sonic acid trip that is PSUDOKU knows that would be selling his oeuvre far too short. It turns out he’s not only punk as all fuck but no slouch with thinking outside the usual four musical dimensions. The one man musical menagerie is responsible for several of the best albums of the last several years, regardless of his chosen musical identity. I predict now we’ll be discussing them for several more years to come.

7. Pingdum (Total Fucking Destruction)
Only the most psychically unmoored of guitarists could keep up with Rich Hoak’s grindfreak railroad side project Total Fucking Destruction. In Pingdum, Hoak has found a musical foil whose guitar strings come in a chromatic spectrum of neon jazz, fit to flesh out TFD’s purpled grind haze.

8. Kapo (Swarrrrm)
Alright, Perpetual Strife, you got your wish. Kapo's in. Now you've got to convince everyone else. Here's his pitch:
"There is not a single grindcore band I know of that's as emotionally complex, musically varied, and openly influenced as Swarrrm. Kapo's guitar work is central to the band's unique style because of his seamless marriage not only in styles, but songsmanship as rarely does anything in their whole discography feel out of place or sound bad."
Ryan Page moves to The Technicians as a result. Poor Karel is out on his ass.

The Punks
Any good hockey sniper will tell you he wouldn't be able to do his job without a big bruising body out there making space. The punks don't play the prettiest game, but they leave bodies flying in their wake.

1. Steve Burda/ShaneMcLachlan [If you think McLachlan is getting shorted, he's in too] (Phobia)
The be-dreadlocked Steve Burda is the embodiment of punked out grind guitar. And anchoring Phobia with constant companion Shane McLachlan for 20 years through all the band's ups, downs and constant lineup turmoil has cemented his status as a grind lifer. Simple and to the point, his riffs are prototypical grind. Nobody's done it better for quite so long.

2. Steve Heritage (Assück)
Assück were always a rough and tumble sounding affair and Steve Heritage was a defining characteristic of the band's gnarly, grizzled sound. He chunked and chopped his way through two crucial albums and a handful of splits that defined early American grind. Heritage was one of the progenitors of that thick, chunky riffing that typified early '90s blasters.

3. Chris Richardson (Kill the Client)
Don't fucking mess with Texas. Or Kill the Client, who have built up an impeccable curriculum vitae riding Chris Richardson's consistently strong guitar performance. A little Terrorizer, a little Brutal Truth; Richardson is all grind.

4. Mika Aalto (Rotten Sound)
Equally adept at channeling pure grind and crust punk Mika Aalto (aka Q) has built a career out of to the point blasts of railgun shrapnel with Finnish grind institution Rotten Sound (your second favorite band the last time we did this). How do you say "punk as fuck" in Finnish?

5. Rasyid (Wormrot)
The superlatives start to pile up fast whenever Wormrot's name enter the conversation and Rasyid's ridiculously adept way with an unforgettable riff is one of the chief components of the Singaporean band's remarkable success. With two confident albums under his belt, Rasyid's no frills assault is quickly climbing the staircase to the grind throne.

[New addition] 6. Beau (Insect Warfare)
HeroinJesus caught me. Leaving out Insect Warfare's Beau was a pretty big oversight on my part. It's impossible to tell the tale of modern grind's evolution without at least namechecking the shortlived but extremely influential Texans. Beau's frenzied playing was a huge driver to that band's success. Beau helped bring the punk back to grind. He was pinpoint sharp, twisting like a knife in your guts. Sorry Jerry Flores, but somebody had to get cut.

6. 7. Shinji (324)
Another band that's not content to abandon crust wholly in favor of grind, 324's Shinji busts out tune after tune that can just as easily support a blastbeat as it does a gang chorus. The Japanese "darkness grinders" never take a detour when a direct riff will get them where they want to go, which is usually upside your head.

7. 8. Marissa Martinez (Cretin)
What may get lost in all the hullaboo about Marissa (nee Dan) Martinez's protean genitalia, is the fact that the chick rips out the best Repulsion songs the Michigan band just never got around to penning. Erring on the thrashy side of grind, Martinez's riffs build off of a chlamydia-cathy simplicity that lodges her Tod Browning-core praise of all things twisted and bizarre.

8. Jerry Flores (Excruciating Terror/Bloody Phoenix)
Another lifer who just keeps grinding along with no end in sight, Jerry Flores and Excruciating Terror were part of that early Los Angeles grind scene that also gave us Terrorizer. When that band imploded, he took his signature punk-on-speed riffs to his next band Bloody Phoenix, picking up right where he left off: simple, direct, devastating.

The Technicians
The geeks of grind, these guys are the ones who dazzle us with higher level mathematics workouts in guitar form. Why use one riff when 12 will do? Why play at human speeds when you can force everyone around you to keep pace with your V-8 powered metronome?

1. Takafumi Matsubara (Mortalized/GridLink/Haiyano Daisuki)
Regardless of which band he's anchoring, Takafumi Matsubara makes the impossible sound effortless as he forces every musician around him to step up their game. With one foot in the redonkulous fretboard gymnastics of Japanese speed metal, Matsubara has demolished traditional grindcore in the pursuit of something more physically and emotionally demanding.

2. Rob Marton (Discordance Axis)
Rob Marton could dazzle with his technical acumen, but he never got showy with his skills. All of the guitar pyrotechnics were bent in service of a memorable and powerful song. There are a horde of technically adept musicians, but not many of them really understand what makes music really tick. Prof. Marton has been quietly trying to educate lesser lights for years.

3. Erik Burke (Lethargy/Sulaco/Brutal Truth)
When Brutal Truth reunited in the new millennium, it was a tall order finding a guitarist outre enough to step into McCarty's place. Enter Erik Burke, an upstate New York guitarist who made his mark in the three ring grind/death/hardcore circus of Lethargy (with half of Mastadon in tow) before moving on to the technically demanding Sulaco. So yeah, hopping into Brutal Truth makes perfect sense.

4. Sebastian Rokicki (Antigama)
I need a calculator to balance my checkbook. Sebastian Rokicki of Polish cyborgs Antigama is sculpturing high order wave forms with six strings and an extra-dimensional imagination. Antigama never walks a straight line when they could be slingshotting their way around the sun and back again. Rokicki is the twisty, slippery ringmaster of their outer space excursions.

5. Chris Arp (Psyopus)
I’m pretty sure “Chris Arp” is actually the code name for some DARPA-funded experiment in super powered computer processing transmitting data through musical form. Though commercially less palatable, his original plan to name his band Stranglefuck was probably a more accurate summation of the sliderule-core he's been churning out. This is the soundtrack to all of those non-Euclidean dimensions H.P. Lovecraft kept warning you about.

6. Ryan Unks/Paul Nowoczynski (Creation is Crucifixion)
A twofer this time out, but it's hard to separate the work Ryan Unks and Paul Nowoczynski jointly undertook for the still-underrated, way ahead of their time Creation is Crucifixion. The hacktivists soundtracked the rise of the digital era with circuitry-shaped riffs that rode that vanishing membrane between humanity and its tools. This is where technology and anarchy fuck.

7. Dorian Rainwater (Noisear/Kill the Client)
Shhh don't tell, but I'm pretty sure Noisear guitarist Dorian Rainwater is Erik Burke's genetic clone or possibly a long lost child. Like the New Yorker, Rainwater is a carnival sideshow in audio form, giving musical voice to all the bearded ladies and crocodile boys who never got their due. He never seems more comfortable than tumbling from the heights of the big top, operating without a musical net.

8. Karel (Cerebral Turbulency)
The T-1000 of Czech grind, Karel and Cerebral Turbulency assimilated every musical innovation that came along: industrial, technical death and freaky experimentation and welded them to a chassis of brutish grind. Somehow Karel always made it work even though every Cerebral Turbulency album sounded different from its predecessors. This is the soundtrack to Sarah Connor's nightmares.

8. Ryan Page (Body Hammer/Robocop)
Ryan Page is probably my favorite guitarist (and electric toothbrush-ionist) of the young crop of up and comers. As though combining a love for horror movie soundtracks and grindcore nihilism in the electronic nightmares of Body Hammer were not enough, Page also kicked power violence into the 21st Century with Robocop. Where his contemporaries in the power violence revival are largely content to recycle their forefathers, Page has found a new musical lexicon steeped in horror, information overload and violent body/machinery interactions.

Weekend Punk Pick: Descendants

2012-01-01T08:08:00.003-05:00

It's not too many bands that can boast having both a Phd biochemist and Black Flag's drummer among their alumni. The Descendants were one of the greatest '80s punk bands simply because they didn't pretend to adhere to lame punk cliches. With a motto of "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll minus the sex and drugs," the Descendants bust out immaculate songs about suburban angst and confusion, impending college, life choices, and, of course, girl problems. If you don't think "Clean Sheets" is one of the greatest pop tunes ever penned, you have problems. It's either that or "Sour Grapes."

You Grind...But Why?: Rehumanize

2011-12-30T15:51:00.002-05:00

Florida duo Rehumanize formed with a simple mission: kick ass for the Lord. Singer/drummer Felipe may have been a grind novice, but he scored a winner with his first crack at it, Resident Apostasy. Weaned on death and black metal, he said grindcore's direct, pugnacious nature freed him up to address his Christian faith in avenues other musical styles foreclosed.

"I was introduced to grindcore in the late '90s," Felipe said. "Since I was a death / black metal fan, I loved its speed, aggressiveness, and brutality. I had already played in death and black metal bands, and thrash, so I started Rehumanize to vary and to be able to express myself differently. I am more of a death metal fan, but grind is awesome, the sonic chaos attracts me, so I wanted to play my own. My death metal lyrics did not allow me to express myself in the way I wanted to express myself with grindcore, and that was also a good release. I'm a retired musician but maybe in the future I can continue with grindcore."

Grind in Rewind 2011: The 20 of '11

2011-12-28T18:57:00.045-05:00

Where 2010 was a disappointing wasteland of blandness, 2011 overfloweth with awesome grind. Unfortunately, the attrition rate was also high as we lost Maruta, Defeatist, Ablach and The Endless Blockade. But let's focus on the positive: there was a hell of a lot to smile about in the last 12 months. And that was before my copy of the new Brutal Truth album finally showed up this month after a lengthy detour through the limbo known as "back order."

So let the arguments begin!

20. Total Fucking Destruction
Hater
Translation Loss
Take another trip on Rich Hoak et al's grindfreak railroad. Hater's crazy train isn't so much going off the rails as it is forcing everyone to reroute their travel plans. Total Fucking Destruction's bullet train battery meanders further afield than even Brutal Truth. Though Hater is the most straightforward of TFD's experiments, it still tap dances its way through musical minefields most other bands choose to circumnavigate. It's an approach that either means they're going to accomplish the unthinkable or somebody's going home short a leg. Possibly both.

19.
Ablach
Dha
Grindcore Karaoke
Scottish grindcore archeologists Ablach were inextricably tied to their country's storied history. Putting on Dha was like cracking a textbook on warring clans, witch panics and getting blitzed on whiskey. Good wholesome fun, all. Dha, which will be the band's epitaph, was a perfect step forward from flawed first album, Aon. Dha just did everything right, demonstrating the consummate skill that I knew was lurking behind their debut's craptacular production. With the kind of growth they've shown it's a shame they won't get to Tri.

18. Hip Cops
In the Shadow of a Grinding Death
Bullshit Propaganda
There's no one less hip than a cop. Unless your cop revels in classic first wave-style grind that
smooshes together the earliest output of S.O.B. and Napalm Death. Hip Cops are not progressive. They do not have technical chops. Their songs do not advance the grindcore cause or culture a single iota. All they do is thrash the joint any time their 7-inch hits the turntable. This is the kind of unpretentious, perfectly performed grindcore record that keeps the style rooted in its history and constantly vital.

17. Noisear
Subvert the Dominant Paradigm
Relapse
More so even than GridLink or Wormrot, I'd say Noisear may be the most controversial and debated album of 2011. Some of you instantly latched on to their mixture of Discordance Axis and Human Remains, and it's hard not to be enthralled by their circus grind antics. And then there's "Noiseruption." Some of you can shrug off a 22 minute noise track that sucks up half the album's run time and has zero connection the preceding music. I had a harder time with that, but when Noisear were clicking, Subvert the Dominant Paradigm was still a grisly beast of a bitch.

16. Cloud Rat
Cloud Rat
I FB Records/Grindcore Karaoke
There's something brewing up in Michigan. Cloud Rat and The Oily Menace are picking up and carrying on the fastcore legacy left by xBrainiax and Threatener and turning it into something that straddles the current with the historic in a way the seamlessly blends the twin impulses. Cloud Rat just did everything right on their self-titled record, which boasts 11 songs of adrenaline pressed to wax (or bytes if you go with the download version). Cloud Rat chased their full length with a killer threeway with The Oily Menace and Wolbachia, proving the record was no fluke.

15. Trap Them
Darker Handcraft
Prosthetic
Trap Them have pretty firmly established their M.O. at this point: grab bits of every wave of speedy hardcore and metal and chainsaw their way through them all. Not much has changed album to album but Trap Them keep refining their sound each outing, jettisoning what little detritus remains. That impeccable riff to "Evictionaries" remains one of the single best guitar moments of 2011. Darker Handcraft is worth the entry fee for that song alone.

14. Drugs of Faith
Corroded
Selfemadegod
Richard Johnson added rock 'n' roll swagger to his grindcore grimace with Drugs of Faith's first full length album, Corroded. It was a moody, personal album that seethes through various shades of gray and washed out brown. Johnson has always been ahead of his peers as the cornerstone of Enemy Soil or Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but with Drugs of Faith he's blazing an even more provocative trail through his own mental landscape. Corroded bravely speaks to the personal and uncomfortable in us all.

13. Keitzer
Descend into Heresy
FDA Rekotz
Descend into Heresy is the sound of your concussed ears ringing as you stagger forth dazed and bloodied from the bomb crater in the aftermath of an unexpected rocket attack. Keitzer only have one gear: implacable. The Germans take the direct route, obstacles be damned, and plow over any bystanders in their wake. Bolstered by heaping helpings of death with their grind, Keitzer are brutal and none too specific about their targets.

12. Defeatist
Tyranny of Decay
Self Released
Facing the extinction they've so long prophesied, Defeatist left it all on the table for final album Tyranny of Decay. Self-described "apocalypse kook" Aaron Nichols howled his way to near-perfection, finally bringing some much needed variety to his throat work. Everything else, Defeatist simply turned up their already impeccable assault, led by the concussive battery of drummer Joel Stallings. Perhaps a touch slower than their past efforts, Tyranny of Decay allowed Defeatist more room to explore and expand. It's the band's most varied and expressive record. It makes for a quality tombstone to a trio of lifers' bloody career.

11. Rotten Sound
Cursed
Relapse
Rotten Sound churn out quality albums just about as often as the San Jose Sharks choke in the playoffs. It's such a regular occurrence that sometimes it's easy to take the Finns for granted. Cursed continues their career-long streak of great records, emphasizing their crust punk roots more this outing. Songs get more space to breathe without the compulsion to snap every neck in Helsinki. Instead, plenty of Cursed's best offerings are nod-along headbangers that build to a slow burn climax.

10. Wake
Leeches
7 Degrees
In their wake: That's where these young Canadians are leaving many of their contemporaries. Following up an EP that was a clear 2010 standout, Wake make their second trip to the year end countdown with their first full length, Leeches. Second time out, Wake are sounding more comfortable in the hobnail boots they use to stomp craniums. Leeches is a wonderfully huge sounding album curated by Scott Hull and he lets the boys root around in his cabinet of grind, death and power violence oddities. There's plenty they seem to have picked up from the foot of the master.

9. Robocop
II
Grindcore Karaoke
Robocop cooked up the clear winner of the hometown shout out race with power violence piss take "Maine is the Bastard." But the band's cleverness is not limited to lyrical snark. A postmodern, postindustrial, post-power violence romp through a world where the membranes between man and machine are becoming dangerously (intriguingly?) permeable, Robocop are the high priests of J.G. Ballard-core. "Aftermathematics" felt a little clunky and disjointed for my taste, but that's really nitpicking at this point. This is a band that's more on the ball, intelligent and articulate than many of the their better acclaimed predecessors.

8. Cellgraft
Deception Schematic
No Reprieve
Cellgraft are the epitome of the internet band. Their success among the grindcore masses has largely been attributable to glowing blog praise and good old fashioned word of email. Florida's premiere grindcore trio slapped us upside the collective noggin with Deception Schematic, a knotty, snarling 7-inch worth of bile, broken resisters and collapsed civilization debris into songs that (all but on one of which) never crack a minute. I prefer Deception Schematic's grisly guitar tone (some of you were more partial to External Habitation's tinny table saw buzz), but regardless of your preferences, Cellgraft never disappoint.

7. thedowngoing
Untitled EP
Grindcore Karaoke
Not only do those sneaky fucks in Australia claim Christmas and the New Year are mid-summer holidays (seriously?) but they've been plotting grindcore domination while we've been distracted by Foster's beer commercials and old Paul Hogan movies. We were convinced the Aussies are a bunch of smiling, benevolently sloshed blokes right up until the point thedowngoing decided to extrude our souls through our nostrils on the harrowing Untitled EP (recently snagged by Grindcore Karaoke). Mathias Huxley gives the vocal performance of a lifetime, fully committing himself to his finest Linda Blair impersonation. I'll never look at the land of kangaroos and koalas the same way again.

6. Wormrot
Dirge
Earache
By Wormrot standards, Dirge was a safe, slightly flawed record. By every other band's standards, Dirge would have been a career-making album. Hewing a bit too closely to the mold established by 2009 champion Abuse, Dirge found the Singaporean trio reveling in the same cross pollination of Repulsion and Insect Warfare they've claimed as their own patch of grindcore terra. Rasyid and Fitri have reached a level of musical simpatico you'd expect only from performers who have been playing together for decades and the shared joy of their performance elevates Dirge from its humble ambitions. I fully expect Wormrot to take another run at the top spot with their next album.

5. Dephosphorus
Axiom
7 Degrees
Nothing prepared for me for the journey Greek grindonauts Dephosphorus had planned with debut mini-album Axiom. Nothing excites me more than to stumble across a never before heard of band that totally kicks my ass, and I'm still walking around with a bruised rump courtesy of Dephosphorus several months later. Easily the biggest surprise of the year, Axiom is also one of the best albums. It stitches together grind, crust, atmosphere and bits of black metal's obsession with things unworldly; Axiom is one of the most compelling records I heard in 2011. The 12-inch gatefold put out by 7 Degrees is also ABSOLUTELY STUNNING and the best packaging to be found this year. Dephosphorus started the year as unknowns but they close it out with upcoming full length Night Sky Transform lodged at the top of my most anticipated list.

4. PSUDOKU
Space Grind
Revulsion
Parlamentarisk Sodomi was one of my favorite bands to emerge in the last several years, churning out ass kicking albums almost effortlessly year after year. Then solo, misanthropic grindmonger Papirmollen crossed up Parlamentarisk with Parliament-Funkadelic and blasted off into the cosmos to sodomize Uranus. Piloting a neon-pink Super Star Destroyer named PSUDOKU, Mollen added weird keyboards, odd noises and space special effects to his already prodigious grind arsenal. This was the only album released all year that can compete with Orphan on a purely adrenaline basis. This atomic dog has learned some new tricks.

3. Maruta
Forward Into Regression
Willowtip
Forward into Regression was the most grisly sounding album afflicted upon the grindily minded in 2011. Maruta's (sadly/frustratingly/disappointingly) final album gnawed at your femur and sucked out the marrow inside. Hopscotching between grind and power violence is a pretty standard trick in most bands' bags these days, but nobody mixed them with the flair of Maruta. That snarling, nasty guitar tone is instantly recognizable as a serial killer's trademark flourish. It's a shame to see a band as promising as Maruta, still on the upward swing of their young careers, implode, but they left behind two excellent albums, especially Forward into Regression.

2. Looking for an Answer
Eterno Treblinka
Relapse
There is nothing flashy about Eterno Treblinka, but Looking for an Answer very quietly and skillfully turned in a flawless grindcore record. Every song is catchy and perfectly crafted. Every riff, fill and Sylvester the Cat gone grind scream serves to advance the whole. There is not a superfluous second to be found. Looking for an Answer's ideology is just as uncompromising as their music; religion, politics and carnivores all go under their knife over the course of 17 bright line political statements. Spanish grind is one of the most exciting European scenes going right now and Looking for an Answer just proved they're at the head of that pack.

1. GridLink
Orphan
Hydra Head
Helen Keller could see this coming. I think I've made my feelings about Orphan fairly clear. We all know where we are on this album, so rather than rehash past debates, I'm simply going to shamelessly quote something fellow Chang fanboi Da5e of Cepahalochromoscope fame once told me:

I'd go so far as to say it's grindcore 3.0... Napalm Death's early stuff was the initial release (their Crass soundalike demos being an alpha), TID was grindcore 2.0, Amber Gray was a beta release and Orphan is a new beast, fully HTML5 compliant, demonstrating that the genre has stagnated and needs to evolve and move forward. I'd stick my neck out and say Matsubara is the greatest songwriter working in extreme music.

I find it hard to disagree with any of that. How many other grind bands can claim their music was used to violate the UN Convention Against Torture in an episode of Homeland?

Grind in Rewind 2011: The 11 Demos of '11

2011-12-26T07:26:00.009-05:00

If this year's crop of demos are any indication, we're going to have several good years of grind before us. 2011 was chockablock with scrappy youngsters who respect their elders but aren't afraid to muscle their way to the front of the line. Especially this year's number one demo. I'd say a good four or five of these young bands could break out in the next few years. If so, the future is extremely bright.

11. Shangkuan Lingfeng
Demo
Scrappy Indonesians Shangkuan Lingfeng bulldoze their way into the last spot on the best-of list by enthusiasm and will alone. Their three song live-in-a-rehearsal-room demo may have lacked niceties (like intelligible instruments), but the band powers through with a pomp and bite that redeem the whole package. Fans of gut-level grind that gets by on energy and doesn't get hung up on the technical details need look no further.

10. Detroit
Demo
Detroit were readying a split with Robocop when their demo landed in my inbox and the Canadian band in many ways comes off as Robocop Jr., minus all the audio experimentation. What that leaves is an updated assault on '90s fast hardcore's foundations. Names like Infest, Crossed Out and Capitalist Casualties should come up in any conversation about their demo.

9. Spewtilator
Get Conjured
Spewtilator just might have penned some of the stupidest songs I've ever heard as part of their old style crashin' thrashin' Get Conjured. And deity of their choice bless them for that. It's a needed reminded that sometimes we take ourselves way too damn seriously. Some days you need to drop your worries and run around your living room pitting to songs about NES games and zombie bears.

8. Gripe
The Future Doesn't Need You
Gripe have got their grinding down, now they just need to add a few extra shelves to the workbench. The songs on The Future Doesn't Need You are uniformly strong but lack a bit of variety. However, this demo (later picked up by Grindcore Karaoke) is piquant enough that I've marked Gripe down as a band to watch. These guys have plenty of room to grow and the knowhow to get there.

7. Syntax
Demo
Syntax are on that bleeding edge of bands that absorbed Discordance Axis with their mother's milk and aren't afraid to wear their influences on their sleeves. Assuck also played a prominent role in their growth. While someone like Cellgraft has been able to turn those two pole stars into something unique, you can catch Syntax cribbing from the sheet music every so often. However, with their demo they're off to a fine start on a career that should take them far, provided their learn to bend others' tools to their will.

6. Colombian Necktie
Colombian Necktie
Colombian Necktie would make this list for the song "Joe" alone. That may be the first great hardcore song written about America's recent military excursions. The pain and guilt of that one song are undeniable and absolutely arresting. That's good enough to get the nod, but they included four other songs, including the totally unexpected piano interlude of "Lirit." Amidst the rest of their hardcore lashings, it was a surprising digression but definitely a sign of confidence from a young band.

5. God Harvest
Demo
You got your Man is the Bastard in my Vulgar Pigeons. You got your Vulgar Pigeons in my Man is the Bastard. Two great tastes that taste great together, God Harvest mix up the speedy with the trudgy and pound them both into sand with a piledriver of a bass. This isn't a demo that you listen to so much as one you feel deep in your gut. A nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts, as my droog Alex would put it. Put this one on right before a bout of the old ultraviolence.

4. Busuk
Beats of Rage
More than any other demo this year, Busuk left me wanting more. I'm curious to see how far this crusty-grindy group of miscreants can spread their wings after they banged and bumped with the perfect blend of intelligible performance and live-in-your-living room energy. But at only three songs, this demo feels like a bit of a tease. I know they have more left in the tank. I can't wait to hear it.

3. The Oily Menace
All Out Folk Attack
The only reason this isn't ranked any higher is that it's entirely cover versions of Napalm Death's "The Kill" and a handful of folk tunes stretching from the Depression straight through the '60s protest music heyday. Though the tunes are not original, The Oily Menace's passion is undeniable. All Out Folk Attack just bleeds excess energy into the atmosphere. This young band (who chased their demo with a quality threeway with Cloud Rat and Wolbachia) are the perfectly poised troubadours for the moment. It's an era of unrest and they've found a way to tap into that sense of anxiety and unease that define the age of economic collapse.

2. Per Capita
The Damage Done
Per Capita don't do a single original thing on The Damage Done, but they do it with such swagger and panache that it's easily pardoned. Rugged grind and crusty d-beat take one more victory lap around the track, but Per Capita are skilled enough songsmiths that I don't mind curling up with an old favorite. Plus they cover Dropdead. I'm pretty sure there's a rule somewhere that says if you pull off a great Dropdead cover you get a pass.

1. Priapus
Air Loom
Genital grinders Priapus redefine cock rock with their stellar demo, Air Loom, which takes a run at the swampy grind throne Maruta, unfortunately, just vacated. Priapus come right out of the gate with the most professional sounding demo of the year and with the attitude and chops to back up their swagger. This is the sound of tendons snapping and joints cracking over the rack in the hands of a skilled inquisitor. They play your pain like an extra instrument. I'm expecting big things from this Willowtip-ready band.

Christmas Punk Pick: Ramones

2011-12-24T08:26:00.000-05:00

Merry punkin' Christmas from the Ramones.

You Grind…But Why?: Mike Stitches

2011-12-23T16:09:00.002-05:00

Whether he’s working with a full band or brutalizing your eardrums all on his lonesome, Mike Stitches is a slave to the grind. His compulsive quest for sonic acceleration has led him from the shortlived Thousandswilldie through his current bass-driven solo project Standing on a Floor of Bodies. Oh sure, he’s dabbled in music’s other stylistic offerings, but Stitches said he keeps coming back to his one true love.

“I feel like no matter what kind of band I'm in, I always end up returning to grind,” he said. “There's always that urge to play fast. I've been in metal bands, hardcore bands, worked with electronic music and noise, etc. For whatever reason, nothing fulfills me on the same level as grind. Now that I've got Bodies going, I look forward to how each release will turn out because I know for a fact this is the kind of music I want to make and have been trying to make for years. Thousandswilldie came relatively close, but I was nowhere near as excited about that as I am now with Bodies. Either way, once I started playing grind, I felt much more confident in the music and the recordings. The other stuff is fun but not the same.”

Demo-lition Derby: Shangkuan Lingfeng

2011-12-21T19:30:00.002-05:00

Shangkuan Lingfeng
Demo
If your precocious toddler formed an impromptu grind band on your kitchen floor with upturned pots and pans, it would probably sound a lot like Shangkuan Lingfeng's three song rehearsal demo. This is probably the tinniest demo I've heard all year. The drums sound like an overturned saucier getting thwacked with a kitchen spoon and I'm not entirely convinced the guitars, buried deep in the mix, haven't been swapped out for a bandsaw.
That said, this Indonesian grindcore troupe succeeds by dint of sheer grit and chutzpah where technology failed them. It's got a certain energy and panache that redeems its amateur origins. (The band called it "raw as fuck.") It sounds like it was recorded in your living room and listening to it is like inviting them over for a private show, cruddy garage-quality equipment and all. But when you can cut through the squall, there are hints of 324, Terrorizer and countrymen Bangsat lurking in their songwriting.
Final song, "Bodoh," is the demo's gem. It boasts the most robust guitar sound and features the best overall balance of songwriting, production and performance. It's the best indication of what Shangkuan Lingfeng could accomplish with some decent equipment and a real recording budget. If they can clean their sound up (but not too much) this could be yet another fun Southeast Asian grind band to watch. Check out their demo here.

G&P Review: Defeatist

2011-12-19T19:22:00.005-05:00

Defeatist
Tyranny of Decay
Bandcamp/Nerve Altar
Tyranny of Decay is a hedgehog's dilemma of a record. Defeatist have scaled back the acceleration enough that mere mortals can really appreciate just how crafty this New York City trio is, but the angular aggression (that recalls the band's Anodyne roots) is abrasive enough to keep all comers at an emotional arm's length. This is a prickly little beast that leaves an impression even if it won't be taking gold in the 100 meter any time soon.
Once again, Joel Stallings is a fucking monster behind the drums. He just naturally elevates the performance of everyone around him. This outing it's guitarist/vocalist Aaron Nichols who steps it up, finally expanding his vocal repertoire to match the intensity brought by the backline players. While they sacrificed speed to do it, that makes Tyranny of Decay probably Defeatist's strongest and most dynamic record. Of course, once Defeatist found their perfect balance that's when they decide to break up. But this pay-what-you-want download is a fine farewell for the gatekeepers of old school New York City grind.
"Mantle Retractor" is a waddling ankylosaurus of a tune; it's a squat bastard that revels in its own earthiness while "World Left Behind" seems intent on drilling its way through space-time and into the next universe by implacable force of will alone. One of the things I really loved about Tyranny of Decay is the way the lumbering "Mantle Retractor" obliterates the album's midpoint before being scythed away by the savagery of "Nameless Graves," giving the impression the whole album was sequenced for a vinyl release ~~that, unfortunately, probably won't come.~~ [Whoops, it is available on vinyl; thanks for the catch, Anon.] Defeatist were always consummate pessimists predicting apocalypse and catastrophe. They just got there before the rest of us.

Weekend Punk Pick: Buzzcocks

2011-12-18T08:23:00.002-05:00

*Sigh* Yes, this is the song from Shrek 2, but please don't hold that against the Buzzcocks, whose Spiral Scratch EP was one of the first punk records ever released in England. By the time they collected Singles Going Steady, the 'Cocks had perfected the art of burying artful, beautiful pop tunes under carefully draped layers of punk noise and bile. Seth Putnam also slapped a pic of guitarist Pete Shelley on the cover of Morbid Florist. That's pretty punk, right?

You Grind...But Why?: Ryan Page

2011-12-16T18:30:00.003-05:00

Ryan Page is one of the most exciting of the young guns slinging a guitar (or sometimes an electric toothbrush or bedframe) these days. Whether it's marrying Italian horror soundtracks with faulty electronics and grindcore in Body Hammer or revitalizing power violence for the 21st Century in Robocop, Page is consistently several steps ahead of his peers. He's been so successful (musically if not necessarily financially) because his compositions are carefully considered. Grind and power violence are no lark for him, and he approaches his music as would any other serious composer. Even if his methods are...unconventional.

"I've been trying to think of an answer that's a bit more personal than 'I've always been into extremes and grindcore is the most extreme blah blah blah,' unfortunately I think that's ultimately pretty close to what I was thinking at the time. Drone and grind are the spaces where tempo, perceptually and conceptually, begins to fall apart. There's a quote from Stockhausen somewhere about the point at which rhythm ceases to be perceived as such. Essentially the idea is that if a rhythm is slow enough (the sun coming up everyday for example) it loses its rhythmic character and becomes something more systemic, similarly extremely fast rhythms essentially become tonal, or in the case of Body Hammer, a noise band. Anyway, at the time I was interested in the barriers for speed and the fastest possible music, and eventually I wanted to take things further, beyond what Agoraphobic Nosebleed was doing, which was my benchmark for grindcore at the time (and to a certain extent it still is). This was around age 15 or 16. I was playing in a hardcore/grind band, and becoming somewhat frustrated with the limitations of that.
"I guess the other element of the narrative is that I also developed an interest in noise; an interest that only grew when my bandmates protested ('that's stupid, you can't have a separate track just for feedback,' 'it needs to become a song eventually'). Interestingly, the sound I hoped to achieve with this band was a lot like how Robocop II ended up. So out of the frustrations of feeling limited by playing with other people, I started the recordings that became Jigoku.
"Many of the songs on that album came from improvisations, using microphone feedback or prepared guitar. I was interested in using limited means (guitars, microphones, and drum machines, no synthesizers) to create a fairly broad sound. I wanted to remove myself from music as much as possible. I would detune my guitars to the point where they were no longer producing pitch, and use a wrench I found like a bow (and arrow, although sometimes in the musical sense as well) or create rhythms by hitting my pickups. On one track I used a giant reverb on the a recording I made of scraping on a bedframe."

The Namesake Series: "Chemical Warfare"

2011-12-14T17:14:00.003-05:00

Decidedly non-grinding this time out, but I can't let the fact that both the Dead Kennedys and Slayer - probably two of the most defining bands of my pre-grind high school experience - have songs called "Chemical Warfare." The juxtaposition of Jello Biafra's comical indictment of chest-thumping militarism hilariously bounces off of Slayer's attempt to be all scary and serious and dark and oh sooooo metal.

The Dead Kennedys lived by Voltaire's prayer, and the 1980s provided them plenty of fodder for their sneering assault on stifling Reagan-era conformity. Biafra took the jingoistic fellating of the military and the United States' war-mongering prowess that was de rigueur at the time and upended it. What better target for liberated chemical weapons than your local country club?

In Slayer's hands, "Chemical Warfare" becomes an awesome, abrasive slab of relentless thrash that stands out on their finest all around release, Haunting the Chapel. (As an aside, can we all finally just admit that Reign in Blood is two great songs bookending a bunch of really meh filler? I mean, is there really a garage band out there clamoring to add "Reborn" or "Necrophobic" to their repertoire?) There is no humor to be had here. The jokers will only die laughing.

For totally bonus shits 'n' giggles, here's Sepultura's "Rest in Pain (R.I.P.)," which liberally steals from the Dead Kennedys' "Chemical Warfare" as it fades out.

G&P Review: Fuck the Facts

2011-12-12T20:36:00.005-05:00

The sweat dripped from his forehead and ran down his cheeks. It welled at his throat and flowed down his chest. An inexhaustible reservoir of sweat.... If only, he thought, everything were inexhaustible this way--he would hardly need to exist as an independent, solid entity. It would be enough to be connected up with something, to be connected to the source of the stream. He'd been sure of that so far; but sources dwindle and dry up, and the more he sought to cling to them the farther, he suspected, they would recede into the distance.

Yukio Mishima
"Sword"
1963

Fuck the Facts
Die Miserable
Relapse
For a band declaring they're bound to Die Miserable, I just don't get the feeling that Canada's Fuck the Facts are all that perturbed by the prospect. Grindcore is supposed to be angry music; Fuck the Facts should rage, rage against the dying of that light a little bit more. Though they're consummately talented musicians, I struggled with Die Miserable's lack of heart. (This may be just a matter of not clicking with my tastes, so I recommend VII's ecstatic revelry in the album's praise.)
There's an unfortunate mechanical sterility to the drums that I know damn well were performed organically and that trickles through the entire performance. Every riff, scream, fill and bass run are technically on point and masterfully executed, but I kept wondering what someone like Landmine Marathon could have achieved with this batch of songs instead. Sure they'd shatter some of the finery, but the heart would be balls out (if that makes any sort of anatomical sense).
Die Miserable's clear highpoint is mid-album pivot "Census Blank," which succeeds in evoking that sense of impending apocalypse and annihilation via a maddeningly tapped central riff that would have done Botch-era Dave Knudson proud. It's like trying to decode a lifesaving Morse code message when all of the codebooks have been blanked out.
The rest of the songs left me cold, like the faux-Neurosis transcendental near-miss of the title track. I just kept expecting Fuck the Facts to deliver that truly knock out song that would define Die Miserable and, much like Godot, it just never showed up.
Brutal Truth are the patron saints of off-kilter grind, but they never lost sight of their titular adjective in pursuit of their nominal noun. Die Miserable pays pro forma tribute to the dread that must accompany the unknowable prospect of our own dissolution, but the emotions never dig deeper than the surface. Rather than dying miserable, this album leaves me thinking Fuck the Facts will die alone after a period of prolonged indifference just like the rest of us.

[Full disclosure: Fuck the Facts sent me a download.]

Weekend Punk Pick: The Crucifucks

2011-12-11T13:21:00.002-05:00

Have you ever said to yourself, "Self, I really love the Dead Kennedys, but it would have been really awesome if they swapped in Rodger Rabbit for Jello Biafra." Well, Self, you are in luck because that pretty much sums up Wisconsin's greatest contribution to '80s punk, The Crucifucks. Deliberately provocative (their debut, self-titled album was broken up by a running phone conversation with a local cop and campus authorities trying to shut down an upcoming house show) and patently absurd, The Crucifucks were surrealist agitators in service of the lulz on their debut self-titled album and follow up Wisconsin (the less said of their early '90s reunion record L.D. Eye the better). They also continue the long tradition of great punk songs that desperately need grind covers with "Earth by Invitation Only."

You Grind…But Why?: Shantia

2011-12-09T18:17:00.003-05:00

Shantia, six string anchor to Dutch grinders My Minds Mine and Blood I Bleed, is easily one of my favorite songwriters working these days. He’s got a stripped down punk quality to his playing that careens between catchy and aggressive amid strangling squalls of delicious guitar feedback. It turns out for Shantia grind wasn’t so much a choice as a calling.

“I was into hardcore/punk right after I was into (speed/thrash/any) metal and discovered this beautiful mix of both with even more speed and anger,” he said. “My band at the time quit in '95. As I had some friends who are/were on the same level as me music-wise, it wasn't even a discussion; we had to start a grindcore band.”

Words Fail Me

2011-12-07T19:34:00.003-05:00

So you've accepted that most grind lyrics are various degrees of awful. What's an enterprising young band to do if they don't want to embarrass themselves with bad poetry and aren't willing to go full on instrumental? One option is to skip the lyrical morass entirely and try to pair your song to a great sample that will serve in the stead of your own words. Yes, I've bitched about haphazard use of samples before, but this is a cool and tricky move that, as far as I'm concerned, isn't used nearly enough. It's one that takes far more thought and planning than crapping out another bit of Full Metal Jacket dialogue to start your record.
It's tricky because you have to identify the right sample and, when it's done best, construct your song around it, timing the music to the sample's rhythms and pacing. However, if a band can nail that perfect pacing, it's a really cool effect.
Here are three pretty good examples.

ASRA "Untitled"

The dearly departed ASRA gave full expression to the death half of their death-grind perfection with "Untitled," which rides the corporate condemnation of its sample like a death-doom roller coaster of paranoia and dislocation. It's the perfect sample for an era when the country is inflamed with anti-corporate, populist uprising sentiment. This could be the soundtrack to Occupy Wherever. "Untitled" is a Jason Voorhees of a song, implacably plodding along until its conclusion, refusing to alter its deliberate pace but still, somehow manages to sneak up to you and plant its political machete firmly in your cranium at the end.

Wormrot "Condemnation"

"Condemnation" is a bit more haphazard of an effort but still worth discussion. Wormrot find a great tinfoil hat of a schizophrenic for a sample, but the ranting gets away from the music a bit. A better pairing of the rhythm of the words to the music would have shown it off to better effect. Wormrot later went back an added their own lyrics and vocals to "Condemnation," but I like the earlier version with the psychotic sample raving about government mind control.

Who's My Saviour "Save Your Breath"

Who's My Saviour's awesome "Save Your Breath" plops you right into the claustrophobic space suit with Dave as he confronts 2001's psychologically unstable Hal 9000. The churning, stonerish grind adds to the atmosphere, becoming the adrenal heartbeat and panicked breathing of a man in full fight or flight. It's probably the most perfect use of a movie sample in grindcore. Everything about this song just clicks. The pathos of poor, distraught Hal perfectly rides the cresting waves of the music, which gives emotional and musical impetus to the proceedings. This is the song that convinces more band needs to give the sample-in-lieu-of-lyrics approach a whirl.

G&P Review: Cloud Rat/The Oily Menace/Wolbachia

2011-12-05T19:43:00.003-05:00

Cloud Rat/The Oily Menace/Wolbachia
Split
IFB Records
Who doesn't enjoy the occasional pleasant threeway? Certainly everyone's favorite sex fiend and Romanov embarrassment, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, had a hard time saying no. The Mad Monk's glowering gaze presides over the sweaty, tangled bedsheets and awkward, giggling morning after conversations following Cloud Rat, The Oily Menace and Wolbachia's drunken experimentation on their threeway split LP.
Standing at the center of this 12-inch experience, both literally and figuratively, is Michigan's The Oily Menace, who follow up their outstanding All Out Folk Attack EP (recycling some songs in the process) with a blistering outpouring of grindified protest music and their own breed of sonic outrage. The Oily Menace employ their instruments as ideological weapons and it's no exaggeration to say they are quickly becoming the grindcore equivalent of The Clash. This could be the only young grindcore band that really matters. They are not mouthing cliches when they advocate for a locovore lifestyle (to the point of including kale seeds in the record) or taking outraged DIY potshots at everyone's favorite car company on "Scion and Vice." There's a conviction that comes through that can't be denied. The Oily Menace just get better and better with each release.
Cloud Rat, who kick off both sides of the record, also flamboyantly flash a few new tricks, following up on their excellent self-titled album. The same frenetic blasting that tilts more toward fast hardcore than grind is just as frenetic and jolting as ever. This outing, the vocals are the focal point, an unusual choice for a grind band, but the frothing bile and searing spit demands attention. It's a great curveball that really plays to Cloud Rat's strengths. While most of their seven songs start blasting right where their last album left off, Cloud Rat do change up the tempo with "Battle of Bulls Run," a knuckledragging trudge that kicks off side two of the album. It's great to see them playing against type and succeeding. It adds another venomous bolt to their quiver.
After all that blasting, Wolbachia are something of the odd men (and women) out. The band brings a bruising breed of female-fronted grind akin to Cloud Rat brainswapped with angular, second generation noise rock a la Anodyne and Knut. The band loves nothing more than double-footing the brake while doing 100 mph and handbraking into a sliding hardcore swing.
Once again, IFB have done a beautiful job with the packaging, printed on old 12-inch sleeves that have been folded inside out and recycled. The lyrics booklet is also plastered over with pastiche of ironic corporate logos and slogans that hearkens back to the chop and glue montages the celebrated Winston Smith used to turn in for Dead Kennedys albums.
Cloud Rat, The Oily Menace and Wolbachia deliver a well balanced and fluid threesome of a record, and you don't have to delete your browsing history in shame after enjoying it.

[Full disclosure: Cloud Rat sent me a review copy.]

Weekend Punk Pick: The Clash

2011-12-04T08:06:00.000-05:00

The only band that really matters. Here's a great twofer that highlights the politics vs. pop personality split between Joe Strummer and Mick Jones.

You Grind…But Why?: Resistant Culture

2011-12-02T18:47:00.001-05:00

While many of us can claim Terrorizer introduced us to grindcore, I doubt you can say Jesse Pintado gave his imprimatur to your racket. But that’s how L.A.’s resident indigenous-core grinders Resistant Culture (which Pintado joined post-Napalm Death) found out their punk and metal racket had a name.

“Grindcore wasn't so much a choice for Resistant Culture, it was more of an evolution,” the band said. “Originally the band was called Resistant Militia founded in the late 1980s. At that time, grindcore was just barely starting to emerge. We were synthesizing punk and metal as crossover. At one point the late Jesse Pintado (RIP) described the new heavier types of crossover as ‘grind.’ He said it was like putting the sound of punk and the sound of metal into a grinder and cranking it out!”

Panic! at the Discography: Pig Destroyer

2011-11-30T19:40:00.003-05:00

Pig Destroyer
38 Counts of Battery
Relapse
2000
Pig Destroyer achieved the nigh-unthinkable on early career compilation 38 Counts of Battery: it's a discography record that easily stands on its own as a contained album experience. That's largely because the first 18 of the eponymous 38 tracks come from Pig Destroyer's debut album Explosion in Ward 6. When you tack on an extra 20 songs corralled from the band's various splits and demos it still feels seamless and coherent. Even with all that, 38 Counts of Battery still comes in at a hair under 40 minutes (a tad long maybe), which keeps everything listenably concise. Despite being culled from disparate sources, the production remains largely uniform. Pig Destroyer's trademark heavy and overblown sound feels seamless and coherent.
Scott Hull probably ranks as the single best grindcore songsmith active right now. Every song is anchored in a distinctive hook. Every riff serves a purpose to advance the theme. Pig Destroyer's choice covers of The Melvins, Carcass and Dark Angel are a nice summation of the various influences that have driven Pig Destroyer creatively (add in covers of The Dwarves, Stooges and Helmet from Painter of Dead Girls and everything the band has done suddenly snaps into perfect focus). So 38 Counts is a wonderful peak behind the Great and Powerful Oz's curtain, letting you see how he grew and experimented as a songwriter, leading up to the perfection that is Prowler in the Yard.
38 Counts also represents vocalist J.R. Hayes' larval stage before he'd explode from the cocoon as a venomous, carrion-yellow butterfly on Prowler as one of the most intelligent and evocative lyricists in grindcore. Songs like "Yellow Line Transfer" and "Unwitting Valentine" are early examples of his obsession with obsession, stalking, toxic relationships and aloof, casually violent women. Others, the warped pro-choice savagery of "Treblinka," show Hayes being far more political than maybe we've come to expect from him.
I always enjoy when compilations include explanatory liner notes to fill in a band's history or illuminate where they're coming from musically, and that's lacking here. However, 38 Counts of Battery is so astonishingly coherent despite being Frankensteined together that it's easy to forget it even is a compilation. Instead, it just serves as another great album in Pig Destroyer's legendary career.

G&P Review: Guilty as Sin

2011-11-28T19:53:00.003-05:00

Guilty as Sin
Psychotronic
Self Released
Guilty as Sin commit subtraction by addition on latest effort Psychotronic. Their reliance on really bad hardcore barking for the first half of the album distracts from the Massachusetts trio's otherwise thrashing blend of DRI and Voivod. Guilty as Sin lives or dies on the strength of their twisty instrumental mystique and the vocals do nothing to contribute to the music's effect. Luckily, by the stronger second half they shut up and just let you enjoy the expansive weirdness. The rhythmic tension and release of "Addicted to Cyanide," with its dark night of the soul introspective interlude and its spiraling toward enlightenment conclusion, shows just how effective Guilty as Sin can be at conjuring emotion without the crutch of vocals.
Otherwise, Psychotronic is like a curated museum of the last 30 years of punk and metal evolution, revolution and convolution. "Frothing at the Cunt," as its deliberately stupid name may suggest, could have been slapped into the set of just about any of the bands on the infamous Rock Against Reagan tour while the horn section of "Into Dust" would go unremarked on a Total Fucking Destruction record.
Vocals aside, there are a couple of other clunkers that distract from Psychotronic's better moments. The Middle Eastern shuffle of "Godekli Tepe" is too much of a rehash of the similarly-inflected "Before the Flood" from prior album III and the 12 minute title track, which shuts down the album, is meandering to the point of being inert.
So once again, as with III and Led to the Slaughter, Guilty as Sin show flashes of inspired thrashy genius but fail to deliver a concise, complete album. However, editing the best parts of all three records into a single album would make a tidy little experimental thrash extravaganza.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a review copy.]

Weekend Punk Pick: The Sonics

2011-11-27T08:40:00.002-05:00

The Sonics were inventing punk back when John Lydon was swimming blissfully in his Irish pappy's balls. At the same time the Beatles were crooning about holding your hand to legions of 12 year olds, The Sonics were screaming about blue balls ("Psycho"), slurping poison ("Strychnine") and evil chicks ("The Witch") while destroying covers of '60s staples such as "Do You Love Me" and "Have Love, Will Travel." The songs were simple and played with blunt force brutality, driven by ridiculous pounding of drummer Bob "Boom Boom" Bennett and the crotch-level sax sway of Rob Lind. The little Seattle band never had much success in their lives, but they influenced what would inevitably become punk. The compilation The Ultimate Sonics includes a interview with befuddled bassist Andy Parypa who's absolutely oblivious to the band's influence and astounded anybody would bother to interview him about his 40-year old garage band. He may not get it, but a whole host of rockers who came after certainly did.

You Grind...But Why?: Gate

2011-11-25T17:20:00.003-05:00

Gate grind. It's what the Japanese duo does. Toshinori Otake doesn't mince words when I ask the Discordance Axis-inspired guitarist and vocalist why he itches to blast. For him, it's an innate drive and the sense of [synaesthetic?] achievement that comes from it.

"I think the grindcore is an ultimate music," Toshi said. "I have to work hard [so] I can play it. I can taste a great sense of achievement. Of course, I love fast musics!"

The Namesake Series: "I Abstain"

2011-11-23T18:55:00.002-05:00

To keep himself occupied during those tedious tour bus rides (when the keyboardist wasn't playing video games, at least), David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap fame subscribed to the Namesake series of cassettes. The hook was that a celebrity would read the works of some author with the same last name (though why Dr. J was reading the works of Washington Irving remains a mystery).
More than just a throwaway gag during the credits of a 30 year old flick, the notion of namesakes really resonates with me. When you come from a general musical world that revolves around hate, misery, death and pain, it shouldn't be a surprise when two different bands strike at the same image or idea. It's a pretty limited pool you're working with. Nonetheless, I'm always intrigued to see two divergent groups of musicians reach the same point from different directions.
Case in point, in a three year span both Napalm Death and Converge hit upon songs titled "I Abstain." I can't see any other correlation between the two bands and two songs other than that they both decided on the same phrase at about the same time. One doesn't seem to be a reference to the other, as far as I can tell. Intriguingly, both bands slotted it as the second track on their albums
First out the gate in 1992 was Napalm Death with Utopia Banished. After a pointless bit of noisy/industrial folderol, Napalm get their death on with "I Abstain."

Short of my personal favorite, "Dementia Access," I'd say "I Abstain" pretty much typifies both the album and Napalm Death's better post-Mick Harris output. With the only consistent presence and principle songwriter on their first thee full lengths defenestrated, guitarists Mitch Harris and Jesse Pintado shook off the deathly (but respectable nonetheless) rust of Harmony Corruption and started penning pretty much the kinds of songs you'd expect from the guys who anchored Righteous Pigs and Terrorizer, respectively. Just ignore that run from Fear, Emptiness, Despair through Words From the Exit Wound and dive back in with Enemy of the Music Business and the continuity seems to make more sense.
Two years later sickly talented Massholes Converge were lighting the fuse on a hardcore powder keg with their debut Halo in a Haystack (conveniently collected on Caring and Killing with bonus goodies for those of you who don't want to spend a rent check on a piece of hardcore trivia). There at track two is old faithful, "I Abstain."

The plodding menace of the song's deliberative tread is about as anti-grind as you can get short of going all drone doom on our asses. But from the start, "I Abstain" flashed the poise, creativity and pure technical chops that would define Converge, especially once they encountered a young lady who will forever be known as Jane Doe.
Two very different bands within the space of three years write songs with identical titles. So who owns it best? Don't ask me. I abstain.

G&P Review: thedowngoing

2011-11-21T19:52:00.003-05:00

They sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake from Galilee. When Jesus stepped ashore, he was met by a demon-possessed man from the town. For a long time this man had not worn clothes or lived in a house, but had lived in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell at his feet, shouting at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torture me!” For Jesus had commanded the impure spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was chained hand and foot and kept under guard, he had broken his chains and had been driven by the demon into solitary places.
Jesus asked him, “What is your name?”
“Legion,” he replied, because many demons had gone into him. And they begged Jesus repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss.
A large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. The demons begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs, and he gave them permission. When the demons came out of the man, they went into the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

Luke 8:26-32

thedowngoing
Untitled EP
Bandcamp
In the near future, what passes for law enforcement in Australia (which I understand is mostly made up of half-naked guys with football pads and mohawks in souped up cars screaming across the desert fighting over "juice", according to a trio of documentaries I saw in the '80s) will track down duo thedowngoing to find out more about that exorcism they surreptitiously taped and tried to pass off as their Untitled EP. Because I guarantee you no healthy human can/should be able to make those kinds of noises without demonic assistance.
Guitarist/exorcisee Mathias Huxley turns in what is easily the vocal performance of the year, and his spiky, chaotic, just-short-of-random riffing seethes and swarms like a herd of suicidal Gadarene swine. Then suddenly the chaos will smooth, however briefly, and a Pig Destroyer- style hook will breach the surface of the chaotic noise soup just long enough to impale your ear holes just before diving back to the lightless depths of the id. Not to discount the drumming, which is the adrenaline-jacked beat of a full-blown fight or flight trip, but Untitled EP rides on Huxley's dynamism as a guitarist and singer.
At a tidy nine songs and 10 minutes, the adorable little 3-inch CD is perfectly proportioned. Anything more would have defeated the effect by diluting the chaos with sheer repetition. However, this is a perfect example of perfectly balanced economy in action. Previous offering I Am Become was a perfectly serviceable outing, but Untitled EP shows the band reaching new, dizzying artistic heights. There's something demonically magical going on in the land of Oz.
[Full disclosure: The band sent me a review copy.]

Weekend Punk Pick: Minutemen

2011-11-20T08:10:00.001-05:00

Brutal Truth already did a fine job ripping through "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" on Evolution Through Revolution, but "Joe McCarthy's Ghost" is a tune just begging for a grindcore cover. I kicked back to watch We Jam Econo, an excellent documentary about the Minutemen, a few weeks ago. If you've got even the slightest interest in this much-missed band, it's a mandatory watch. Very few bands were as astute as the Minutemen in analyzing the language and economic structures that were stacked up against the little man.

You Grind…But Why?: Wake

2011-11-18T18:24:00.002-05:00

For Wake’s Sergey Jmourovski, grindcore has been a lifelong, bi-continental journey through sonic oblivion, culminating in the Canadian band’s impressive death/grind/violence brew of brutality. As he tells it, grindcore is something that has traveled with him from his native Russia, evolving with him as his musical aspirations matured.

“[F]irst of all, I'm a firm believer that music should always be an expression/extension of what one is going through in their life, anything but that comes off contrived,” he said. “My first encounter with grindcore with hearing Napalm Death, off the Mortal Kombat soundtrack, back in 1995, at 13 years old, right before I left Russia. As you can imagine, grindcore wasn't all that readily available in the middle of Siberia, so it definitely left an impact on me. However, it took me awhile to really get into it. I didn't begin grinding until I was in my mid-20's (I'm 29 now). Having ‘done time’ in punk, thrash/death, atmospheric sludge metal bands prior to that, I was always looking for something that was more true to what my vision of uncompromising heavy music was. Guess I was growing older and becoming more and more frustrated with the state of the world, my own personal failures etc. Grindcore, to me, is the purest expression of whatever dissatisfaction I have; it is a way for me to channel my hate, stay sane if you will. In an age where music is mass produced, this is one of the few genres that is still full of passion and without compromise. I don't imagine any grinders get into it to get rich. As a matter of fact, it is a point of pride for me to be a part of something that I know will never be accepted by the ‘norm.’ At this point in my life, I want to keep creating crushing, fast music that combines my love of punk, metal and hardcore. I think, in the end, grindcore chose me.”

G&P Review: Wake

2011-11-16T19:16:00.004-05:00

Wake
Leeches
Hearing Aids/7 Degrees
It's fun watching young bands grow up. Case in point, last year Calgary's Wake were like little hyperactive grindcore puppies, all boundless energy, floppy ears and too large paws on surprise 2010 standout Surrounded by Human Filth. A year later on debut full length Leeches and suddenly the band has grown into those oversize paws. Now that nipping puppy has some bite in his jaws when he uses your fingers as a chew toy. And play more often than not means putting on a seminar in grindcore drumming.
There's nothing overtly flashing about the drumming, but it's just so pinpoint and tasteful, shoved to the forefront so that it shows off Wake's growing confidence as a band. The drummer beats the toms on "The Means to the End" like they owe him money. It's a pounding reminiscent of Napalm Death's "Dementia Access." The tight snare roll of "Recycle the Sickness" is a small touch, but snaps through at the perfect point.
Otherwise, Wake are back with the same brew of death metal, grindcore and power violence jumble, just with more room to sprawl over the course of 14 songs. Set off by pristine Scott Hull production, Leeches sounds superb without being sterile. Hull allows the band to simply play, letting raw energy carry the commotion. When he does step in, like shoving the uvula-shattering screams of "Cult of War" into the limelight, it's a subtle but potent touch.
Less obvious than the precision drumming, however, is just how mature Wake's songwriting has become. They showed off an impressive array of skills on Surrounded by Human Filth despite only having ~~four~~ five tracks at their disposal, and with Leeches they demonstrate they know how to play with texture and tempo across a full length, whether it's the sneaky melodies that seep into "Aversion," obligatory slow song "Leeches" or the way "Dive's" corkscrew riff slithers between hammer of Thor cymbal crashes. At nearly three minutes and poised at about Leeches' midpoint, "Dive" is an expertly placed breather that sets off Wake's more aggressive fare.
These grindcore puppies may be growing, but I hope nobody housebreaks them too soon.

[Full disclosure: Wake sent me a download.]

Thirty Minutes or Less

2011-11-14T19:54:00.004-05:00

GridLink can keep banging out 12 minute albums until the sun flames out as long as it means they keep things tight and ruthlessly eviscerate any fat. Perhaps the greatest thing I could say for the death of physical music is that artists are no longer chained to the limitations or expectations of the format. Albums are now free to be as long or as short as the music demands without being beholden to a delivery system.
Anybody who grew up during the great CD boom of the '80s and '90s will remember every artist suddenly felt pressured to make full use of a format that would allow them to inflict up to an hour of music on their fans. So we got Metallica songs that clocked in at a bloated eight minutes on average. Now, I have a huge doom collection, and I can appreciate excruciatingly long songs if done well, but you have to earn the right to put out 75 minute albums. It's not something just anybody should be doing. You are probably not Neurosis. Especially grindcore bands. However, some of my favorite artists and even my favorite albums, if I'm honest, are absolutely way too fricken long. With very few exceptions, no grindcore album should top half an hour.
Here are five good reasons why.

Anal Cunt
Everyone Should be Killed
Earache
1993
If no grindcore band should write more than 30 minute albums, that goes doubly for Anal Cunt. I'm gonna go ahead and establish a new iron clad grindcore rule: Seth Putnam should never have been allowed to record anything longer than the infamous 88 Song EP. Morbid Florist, tops. But in 1993 Putnam et al dropped the hefty 58-song, 58:40 behemoth Everyone Should Be Killed. Many of the songs were recycled from Morbid Florist and easily could have been axed in the name of economy. Nearly an hour of blurcore insanity that...ummm...blurs together is too much to ask of even the band's most dedicated fans.

Napalm Death
Time Waits for No Slave
Century Media
2009
T ime Waits for No Slave was a respectable Barney-era Napalm Death album, but in no rational world should it have clocked 50:22. Especially for only 14 songs. (By comparison, predecessor Smear Campaign was a punchier album over all but still a gratuitous 45 minutes for 16 songs). Lopping a good 15 minutes off of Time Waits for No Slave could have made it a ferocious beast of an LP. The From Enslavement to Obliteration days are never coming back, but a pitiless editor could have checked the band's bloat and turned in a record that would have done the Napalm Death legacy proud, regardless of lineup and era.

Nasum
Inhale/Exhale
Relapse
1998
Before the flaming starts, I abso-fricken-lutely love this album. Inhale/Exhale was my first exposure to Nasum back in college and it holds fond memories for me. But it's just too damn long at 45:11. Shortly after Mieszko Talarczyk died, Decibel asked drummer Anders Jakobson to look back over the band's catalogue and something he said about Inhale/Exhale really struck me. After years of struggling, scrimping and saving up to record 7-inches that forced the band to keep things tight, he said Inhale/Exhale was Nasum's first chance to leave a little fat on a record. While Jakobson admitted the record is overly long, anyone who watches Food Network as much as I do will tell you fat=flavor. However, fat is also not always healthy. Judicious pruning would have made an excellent album doubly explosive.

Brutal Truth
Sounds of the Animal Kingdom
Relapse
1997
Shitty production aside, Songs of the Animal Kingdom remains my favorite Brutal Truth record because it's so weird and unexpected, even 15 years later. However, at a whopping 74:16, it's a hell of a slog to get through in one sitting. Yes, the infamous "Prey," which may be one of the most skipped tracks in metal history, comes in at just a skootch under 22 minutes, but even without it, that still leaves more than 50 minutes of grindcore to absorb. Serial long album offenders Brutal Truth packed up a whole Noah's Ark of animal insanity on their then-swansong record. Now, it just feels like a tad like the Marx Brothers' crowded stateroom.

Noisear
Subvert the Dominant Paradigm
Relapse
2011
Noisear turned in album that will surely dominate many top 10 lists in a couple of months with Subvert the Dominant Paradigm. But then they had to go fuck up a tidy 25 minute album by tacking on the 20 minute annoyance that is "Noisearuption" (for comparison, the whole of Pyroclastic Annhialation was less than 22 minutes despite a half dozen Discordance Axis covers). "Noisearuption" is an absolutely awful, grating noise kissoff that nearly obliterates any good will the band had accrued up to that point. It should serve as an object lesson on screwing up a perfectly good album with an uncharacteristic and unnecessary assault on listeners' expectations that doesn't really have any payoff other than pissing people off and making a great album too damn long.

Funny how so many of them are from Relapse, innit?

Weekend Punk Pick: New York Dolls

2011-11-12T19:54:00.001-05:00

Despite stage diving face first into punk in high school, I backed into New York Dolls in college via Poison Idea's cover of the excellent "Vietnamese Baby." When I went and hunted down the original, I was shocked to find out the darkness and menace of the song were not something the Oregonians brought but instead was inherent in the music itself. Here's a band that predicted both punk rock and '80s, sashaying and strutting through stale '70s rock cliches with a sly camp wink. As one reviewer once said, the Dolls were the Rolling Stones in drag and with way better heroin.

You Grind...But Why?: Ablach

2011-11-11T07:54:00.001-05:00

Why did English explorer George Mallory climb Mt. Everest? "Because it's there," he said. Why do Scottish sextet Ablach bust out exquisitely crusty grind tunes that stripmine their culture for inspiration? Because they can, guitarist Bazz said.

"Personally, I got into grindcore before it was called grindcore. When everything heavier/faster than Slayer, was dubbed Death Metal. When the six of us got into a room, we had no thoughts on what genre we'd emulate. The decisive factor was having a drummer who could play blastbeats. Various types of blast for that matter. So, In short... because we could. It's no deeper than that really."

G&P Review: Ablach

2011-11-09T08:20:00.002-05:00

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

T.S. Eliot
"The Hollow Men"
1925

Ablach
Dha
Grindcore Karaoke
Scotland's Ablach no longer reside among the pale shades of the hollow men, having escaped the hollow, reedy production that was first album Aon's only misstep. The crusty grind sextet easily walk away with 2011's most improved award with second album Dha, a burly beast that revels in ferocious guitars and rasping Jeff Walker screams.
As if compensating for the tinny sound of Aon, Dha thrives on that essential sense of desperation -- that rush to make it through a 90 second song without losing the audience's attention -- that makes grind tick. Dha is a fat-free 13 songs (two are covers); all adrenaline, no filler. Right off the hop, "MacPhee" tattoos Scottish lore right across your cranium. But Ablach have also mastered the Terrorizer swing on songs like "From Tillydrone to Obliteration," which not only snarks Napalm Death but tells the tale of an impoverished swatch of the band's native Aberdeen.
Ablach covered Terrorizer last outing and this go-round adds faithful renditions of Phobia and Extreme Noise Terror. Ablach make no bones about being the sum of their influences, but their craftsmanship excuses any overt nods to bands of yore, and their much improved studio presence already has me excited for the inevitable Trí.

Blast(beat) from the Past: AmTerrorXp

2011-11-07T09:40:00.006-05:00

AmTerrorXP
Audible Animism
Self Released
2008
A psychedelic Godzilla on the cover and music awash in hip-hop accoutrements may unearth long-repressed memories of Denver the Last Dinosaur for many of you in the right demographic. Somehow Cephalochromoscope's very own Orfee and his comrade in grind pile all that and a shitload of other pop culture detritus in a Cuisinart and punch liquefy under the guise of AmTerrorXP (aka American Terrorism Experience, as if a couple of overly polite snowbacks can tell good old Americans about terror. What do they know about American Exceptionalism, hmmm? USA! USA! USA!). The insane smoothie they pour out is a blend of Asterisk* introspection and early Agoraphobic Nosebleed insanity (Zmaj went with 324, Discordance Axis and Swarrrm, if that helps). The guitars bite and snarl with a lovely mid-range crunch, forming the foundation for the attendant blasting and screaming.
The Canuckleheads' audio chop shop rips parts from disparate bits of Godzilla, Dracula, hip hop and '60s pop. With all that going on, the songs themselves can occasionally get lost in a mish-mash. However, when the seconds-long bursts of audio shrapnel do hit, they snap and snarl with impressive dexterity and focus. They're good enough that I wish the duo would have left off all the heaps of frosting so I can enjoy the spongey cakey goodness inside. A straight up album of their spastic flechette grind would kick you a new ice hole.
If I've piqued your interest, you can get your own hot little hands on this one over at Cephalochromoscope.

[Full disclosure: Orfee sent me a copy.]

You Grind...But Why?: Sakatat

2011-11-04T19:31:00.004-04:00

Turkey's Sakatat rule and rule hard. That's really all you need to know. The trio won me over on the strength of a four song tour promo CD that destroyed your average band's most polished effort, and now I'm a slavering fan for life. For a band that writes some of the most amazing, concise grind perfection around, vocalist Semih O. will wax rhapsodic about the style at great length given half a chance. If you don't want to blow of holiday plans with your family and thrash in the basement with friends after this, you probably don't have a pulse.

"We barely had any access to decent metal where I grew up, so during my childhood I would listen to basically anything I could get my hands on, whether it be some local metal band or first two Carcass albums on a dubbed tape which is how I got to know grindcore," Semih said. "However, it would take me a while to actually appreciate it. I think I was in high school when I got this Napalm Death VHS from an older metalhead, and I remember watching it back to back, over and over again. Around the same period, I happened to receive tapes and records of bands like Agathocles, Grossmember, Rot and plenty of other obscure underground bands, and all of a sudden grindcore has become the thing. Until then I (and everyone around me) was mostly into death metal and other genres of metal (which I still am) but all those bands introduced me to the other side of the fence which, in a way, was rather punk than metal. So, it is safe to say it was actually grindcore that made me aware of the fact that there is also a huge punk/hardcore scene out there to dive into, but that is another story. I don't remember actually thinking about it back then, but I guess grindcore has had everything I liked about metal (extremity, brutality) minus pretty much everything it lacked of (political awareness,some kind of sloppiness that I actually enjoyed, the DIY attitude etc...).
"Back then I'd been playing the drums for years already. However, all I have been doing since the 6th grade was to spend my weekends rehearsing with local metalheads of my age just for the sake of doing it. So, as soon as I graduated from high school, I spent the summer working and eventually bought a drum-kit and the first thing I did (even before tuning the drums, haha) was to convince my high school desk-mate Onur to record the four punky grindcore tunes I had came up with down in our basement of which two ended up being on our spontaneously formed band's demo that would be called K?sa ve Çi? (Short and Raw).
"Getting into and playing grindcore for me was a pretty spontaneous occasion, however what kept my interest fresh in this humanly non-normal and occasionally lo-fi and raw noise have been the feeling that made me wanna tear my clothes off and smash my head on the monitor, the politically-aware attitude that came up with the noise and the fact that I could even release my outrage against the social and political oppression of the daily life through the bullshit lyrics that we would bury within the short and fast tunes we came up with. Throughout years, all the people we've met during our tours in faraway countries, the bands I've got to see at DIY shows and listened to on the black wax also proved that this wasn't a fad but more of a life-style or at least what would eventually become a big part of my life. And I guess that explains why I [would] rather meet my bandmates to record a new 7" (and consume whole lot of tea before, during and afterwards) than spend the weekends with my parents in my hometown, went on tours in fuck-knows-where [rather] than go on a vacation or more recently, cancelled my trip to the seaside so as to save some cash for the new records that came out this year."

European Disunion: Keitzer Scream as the Continent Burns

2011-11-02T18:54:00.007-04:00

It seems as though several months of pronounced economic instability may be enough to unravel Europe's 13-year experiment with a unified currency as the populations of solvent countries like Germany and France grow increasingly contemptuous of their broke-ass partners in Greece and Portugal. The disparity between the fiscally sound ants and their over-leveraged grasshopper partners may be enough to bring it all tumbling down. But if there's band that can pull a Hasselhoff at the Berlin Wall and reconcile Europe's divergent factions, it would be Keitzer. The 80 percent German-with-a-Portuguese-singer fivesome is a neat cross-section of the European experience and latest long-player Descend into Heresy is a slavering snapshot of these economically and politically unstable times.
Just don't ask bassist Simon (proprietor of the excellent 7 Degrees Records) why they're so pissed off.
"We didn’t print a lyric sheet because we honestly don’t have lyrics!" Simon says. "We never really had some. It’s more some word/noise fragments that come to our singer's mind, in the Obituary tradition, you could say. That’s our response to the nihilist world we live in. And it’s our message."
Quoting my own damn blog back at me, Simon acknowledges most grind bands (possibly even his own) come up lacking in the lyrical department.
"Good lyrics are hard to find, so if you can’t write ’em just, leave it," he said. "Everything of importance has been said already. Or maybe that’s just because we’re all lousy poets, and you wouldn’t understand the lyrics anyway. The music stands for itself. But you’re right, there are lots of things that piss us off. Just watch the 8 o’clock news. Or personal things. Or humanity. Or individuals. I, for myself, can say that I’m a little misanthrope, getting confirmed everyday in my opinions and feelings. All-day hell has a lot of subjects to get real mad."
Descend into Heresy, Keitzer's follow up to the excellent and just as nihilistic As the World Burns, found the band changing studios and, as a result, getting a bigger, deathier sound. Dirk Kusche, the band's usual engineer, quit the recording business, so Keitzer turned to Minion guitarist Dennis Rademacher. He coaxed new subtleties out of the band's performance, letting some of their other, hinted at influences shine. Bolt Thrower " has been a major influence and all time favourite" for Keitzer, and the venerable British institution's influence comes the to fore with panzer-tread guitar riffs and carpet bombing drums.
"Maybe the impression of a stronger Bolt Thrower influence is because we recorded for the first time in another studio because the mighty the studio work was a bit different this time, and the sound differs from our older recordings, too," Simon said. "The guitars sound thicker, and the drumkit has a more technical sound, so the whole album has a more death metal sound than the older ones, which to me sound a little more black metal, kind of. And with all the double bass blasting, it surely has slightly a more Bolt Thrower sound, I guess."
The bigger, burlier sound helps separate Keitzer from their peers in the increasingly crowded German grind scene. The Central European country also boasts Wojczech, Attack of the Mad Axeman, Cyness and Audio Kollaps, making it, per capita, one of the most vibrant grinding countries outside of Spain or Sweden. Though that may make for a crowded market, Simon said relations between the bands remain convivial and supportive. Europe's political leaders may not be able to rise about their petty feuds, but the grind population represents its own Eurozone. And it's not on the verge of collapse.
"Germany’s or Europe’s grind scene is pretty small, so everywhere you go, you meet the same people," Simon said. "It’s very familiar, and all those bands you mentioned above are personally known and appreciated. Having shared the stage for various occasions, some of them have become friends over the years. We just have a good time with each other when we meet on common shows or festivals. And I agree with you, that all those German grind bands have a very own style, their own approach to their music. I don’t know if it’s a German thing, though, but you’re right all these bands are outstandingly awesome."

G&P Review: Burning Ghats

2011-10-31T20:53:00.003-04:00

Burning Ghats
Different Names for the Same Face
Bandcamp
If Burning Ghats weren't accomplished at what they do (and if I wanted to be a complete asshole), I'd say this five song EP should be renamed Different Names for the Same Song. But I don't want to do that because, on the whole, I enjoyed Burning Ghats' followup to the Fool's Gold EP. However, I have to acknowledge the Canadian band's thrash-tinged hardcore feels a bit smudged at times. The barrier between songs is permeable and one tends to bleed into another, but no worse than a million other punk and grind albums. Four out of the five songs feature some variation on chugging guitars with screaming phosphorous leads, drums content to keep the beat with the occasional timely fill and vocals permanently set to spittle-flecked madness.
But it's that other 20 percent, closeout track "Copacetic Deadbeat," that redeems the whole package. It shakes up Burning Ghats' familiarity with down tempos that give the guitars time to ring and chime, a prominent spotlight on swinging power cable bass and the occasional chanting drone. I probably would have shuffled the song up earlier in the rotation just because I'm not a fan of every band sticking their odd song out at the end, but that's just me.
Though the songs suffer from an overall lack of distinction and variety, there's enough frenetic energy driving Burning Ghats to make that an easily forgivable sin.
As always, though, Burning Ghats have incredibly striking, subcontinental-inflected artwork. I'd really love to see this one pressed to vinyl with a giant cover to pore over while Different Names for the Same Face gets cranked on the stereo.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a download.]

You Grind…But Why?: Carlos Ramirez

2011-10-28T18:41:00.003-04:00

Right next door to grindcore lives its unemployed, dreadlocked, power violence. Carlos Ramirez has hopped the fence to crash on both of their couches repeatedly during his tenure with East Coast violence squad Black Army Jacket and the brutally underrated grind collective Hope Collapse. Turns out he may not have noticed much of a difference between them.

“I came into the powerviolence thing through death metal and grindcore,” he said. “I didn't know about bands like No Comment and Capitalist Casualties till after Black Army Jacket started. Andrew from BAJ turned me onto a lot of that stuff and in turn I got him into a lot of death metal bands.”

Industrial Espionage

2011-10-26T18:58:00.003-04:00

The early '90s, apparently, was the heyday of the "let's start our album with a bunch of sampled industrial noise" phenomenon. I guess I had kinda picked up on that before, but it recently gobsmacked me between the peepers when I sat down to blaze through a stack of classic Earache records. It's like sort of the Opposite Day equivalent of ending your album with a really slow song that probably doesn't need to be there.
Case in point, Napalm Death indulge in "Discordance," kicking off my favorite Barney-era album, Utopia Banished.

Dragging it out for 85 seconds is probably uncalled for when slamming straight into "I Abstain" would have been far more effective, but I'm not here to review 20 year old album choices but a British institution content to take a few more victory laps around former glories.
No, I'm here to pick on Carcass and Brutal Truth. Because what really struck me during my Earache binge is that Carcass and Brutal Truth kicked off Necroticism - Descanting the Insalubrious and Need to Control, respectively, with industrialized samples that sound like close enough kin that a wedding license for the two would be unlawful anywhere other than Alabama.
First off, I'll admit they're not perfectly identical, but they have the same crushing kind of vibe to them.
Let's start with Carcass ' "Inpropagation," which tees up 1991's Necroticism with a sound like a small hill giant in soccer cleats stomping over a blabbing bit about forensics.

Three years later Brutal Truth would go to the same well for 1994's Need to Control. Opener "Collapse" was a sludgy trudge that gets going with booming industrial sounds similar to Necroticism. Boom. Boom. Chsssk. Chsssk. Boom. Boom. Chsssk. Chsssk. It's the grindcore equivalent of Jason Voorhees' stalking noises.

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As I said, it's not identical, but when I had the two albums teed up back to back, it was close enough to give me pause. I find this fascinating because, as you may recall, I noticed Brutal Truth may have been stealing Carcass' mail when they wrote the song "Regression/Progression." That opening drum and bass bit sounds, at least to my ears, an awful lot like the intro to Carcass' "Ruptured in Purulence." So to find Brutal Truth trailing a second Carcass-ism was especially intriguing.
As Pablo Picasso (and possibly T.S. Elliot and Oscar Wilde) is alleged to have observed, good artists borrow; great artists steal.

G&P Review: Vipe/Cat Massacre

2011-10-24T20:02:00.004-04:00

Vipe/Cat Massacre
Split
Control Force
I am the petrified forest of punk rock: my tastes calcified somewhere around 1997 and I doubt there's any flexibility left. So that may explain why I've had such a hard time sorting out my feelings about this Idaho twosome's split album.
Neither band strays far from the hardcore reservation over their combined 19 songs. In fact, Vipe could have written "Imposter" virtually any time in the last 30 years were it not for their penchant for croaking vocals that seem to work against the traditional punk aesthetic at times. I found it jarring, but younger punks weaned on modern hardcore may accept it as natural.
Cat Massacre specialize in short, direct songs that occasionally vary in tempo but remain largely consistent in shape and approach. So it's a pleasure when they bust out the inflatable bouncy castle riffing of "Jay Pfiffer," which hops on a hook that spirals throughout the song.
There are also nods to the classics, though, that make me smile. The intro to Cat Massacre's eponymous song reminds me a tad of Bad Brains' "Big Takeover" and Vipe pay tribute to the forefathers of the guitar buzzsaw with "Joey, Johnny, Tommy, Dee, Dee, Joel-Peter."
Wise Karlo, who is far more attuned to these things than I, really seemed to dig this one, and you know that guy has taste. You can also check it out at Control Force's Bandcamp page.

[Full disclosure: Control Force sent me a download.]

You Grind…But Why?: Defeatist

2011-10-21T12:39:00.002-04:00

You wouldn’t think there would be a lot of cultural overlap between Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and grizzled grindcore scene vet Aaron Nichols, guitarist and vocalist for Defeatist (who have posted their latest record, Tyranny of Decay, as a pay-what-you-want download at their Bandcamp page). But like the porn-bedeviled magistrate, Nichols said after all these years he still can’t even define grindcore, let alone explain its seductive attractions. He just knows it when he sees it.

“I was trying to come up with some clever answer to this question, but the truth is that I am a moron,” the self-effacing Nichols said. “How else do you explain a middle aged man still fucking around with blast beats? I have always been drawn to faster and heavier music growing up. I am old enough to have seen the first U.S. Grindcrusher tour and Brutal Truth when Kevin was belt-sanding car doors on stage and Carcass before they sucked. So I guess grindcore was always there. Even though the term is murky, at best. Are there even any formal properties for grindcore? I guess the only fundamental is blast beats but even that varies. I usually know right away when a band isn't grindcore, but if I think of who the best bands are, none of them sound alike.”

Is it Live or is it Memorex?

2011-10-19T18:48:00.004-04:00

Because I'm a geezer, I have not made it to a live show in longer than I'm comfortable publicly admitting. I twice made an attempt to catch Wormrot as they came to town the last couple of years, but both times life, my job, my family intervened. That's how it goes when you hit your 30s. The idea of spending a few hours on a weeknight listening to ear-splitting music with kids half your age only to get up for work a few hours later bleary eyed and exhausted doesn't compete with going home, reheating leftovers and falling asleep in bed at 8:30 halfway through an Iron Chef marathon. Don't ever get old, kids.
So that means for the last *mumble, mumble, cough* years, my musical intake has been entirely recordings. It's gotten me thinking about a close cousin of the punk v. precision argument: live music v. records.
Generally speaking, the metal community, even those of us without music talent, are conversant enough in technique to place a premium on bands being able to stand on a stage and actually play their songs. I think that has become more important as studio technology has improved to the point where bands can endlessly refine their recordings and conveniently gloss over mistakes, often from the comfort of their own laptops.
Knowing that the market for album sales, even during the best of times, was finite, bands that wanted to make music a career relied on touring to sustain themselves. I imagine that impetus has only taken on new importance as record sales have dwindled to near-zero and rampant pirating makes the suggestion of making money off mp3s laughable.
But as with growers and showers, I think there's a divide at work. I think punk-based bands place more of an emphasis on the live forum. I expect Squash Bowels, Wormrot or Repulsion to be able to band out their grisly grind from the comfort of a stage. Their songs live or die by that urgent, human element that's best conveyed during a live setting where the band can feed off an audience's energy.
For their more technical peers, I, at least, prefer the recorded article where I can savor every nuance. Sure, I'm astounded when I hear Discordance Axis recorded The Inalienable Dreamless live in the studio, as did GridLink with Orphan. However, those are the kind of albums I'd rather settle down with on a good stereo and a comfortable pair of headphones so I can drool over little tricks that would probably get lost in a live setting.
Then there are the one man bands like Body Hammer and Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU who obviously can't play live due to logistical limitations. Both Ryan Page and Papirmollen have turned in solo efforts that stand on their own even if you won't see them on your local festival stage. I don't think we've lost anything for that lack, and I'm certainly not going to arbitrarily relegate them to second tier status just because they may not be making the summer tour circuit.
There's a premium placed on live performances, but in a down economy on rural area your chances of seeing your favorite band decline precipitously. For those people, like for me lately, recorded music is probably their only access due to their circumstances. And to be honest, I can remember as a teen being disappointed by some bands seeing them live because my favorite songs didn't sound exactly the way they did on record. The tempos would be off - sometimes faster, sometimes slower - maybe the solos would change or the singer wouldn't articulate - or just skip portions of - the lyrics. Seeing Isis open for a revitalized Napalm Death, watching openers Opeth blow Amorphis off the stage, or seeing a then-largely unknown Pig Destroyer and Mastodon tag team a hall are all great memories. And I love the frenetic energy of a great live show. However, as I get older, more crotchety and incipient nostalgia seeps into my routine, I take more pleasure from hearing my favorite albums sound exactly the way they always do, every time I hear them.
Do you prefer live performances over records? Do you consider live music somehow more authentic than perfect takes and studio trickery? How does hearing your favorite songs live alter your perception of the music? Or does any of this make any difference?

Demo-lition Derby: Seminary

2011-10-17T18:56:00.001-04:00

Seminary
The Bow
There’s nary a skronk, scrape, scratch, squeal or screech Canada’s Seminary don’t pull out of their guitars on The Bow. Clearly, these are musicians who are intimately familiar with their instruments, but I felt there were times they overpowered the rest of the band. The staccato, telegraphing riffs dominate the eight songs that comprise The Bow. The straightforward drums and vocals seem to get lost amid the guitar-driven chaos to such an extent that barely heard cymbal crashes on “Protestant Work Ethic” add desperately needed pizzazz from the rest of the band.
Unlike the guitars, the vocals have only one setting: frothing J.R. Hayes psychosis. It’s an impressive shit fit (kiss off “Pellicle” closes with nothing but his ranting), but stacked against the musical piracy, the screams may be too restrained, too one-note for the multifaceted chaos behind them. The phrasings feel too familiar. I wonder if a more aslant approach would have set off the songs to better effect.
Right now Seminary’s skronk ‘n’ grind is all over the page, but a little more focus and some unity could really push them over the top. You can check out The Bow here.

Four More Years! Four More Years!

2011-10-14T19:58:00.004-04:00

Four years and four laptops later (yes, I just destroyed another one last week), and I feel like I'm only beginning to harness what the blog is capable of. I started blogging for a simple reason: as a reader, I was disappointed in what was already out there. Link farms and poorly constructed reviews abounded. And while I've authored more than my fair share of poorly constructed reviews, in my naiveté /arrogance I decided I could bring something new and insightful to grindcore. How successful I've been, I'll leave to you. You guys keep reading and hanging around, so hopefully I'm not completely wasting your time.
From my very first story, a discussion of metal heads' relationship with the military, I wanted to do something different, dig a little deeper. Not every post lives up to that standard, but that has been my goal and my template.
In an era of instant musical gratification, I consider most reviews superfluous. They're filler, a chance to start conversations about what like about music rather than a "this sucks," "this rules" summation. In fact, I've moved on more to Bandcamp/demo releases simply because I think those bands are more worthy of attention than the latest big budget release from a (relatively) giant metal label. They're pretty good at their own promotion. While I think reviews are declining in importance, those are the posts that keep the blog fresh week to week and buy me the time to work on the longer, more involved pieces that I prefer.
Looking back, a happy confluence of life experiences has pointed me in this direction. I have a degree in English, with plenty of emphasis on textual criticicism. As a result, I'm enough of a postmodernist to believe the distinction between high and low culture is purely artificial. All cultural artifacts are equally deserving of critical scrutiny to better understand how they work, what makes them successful and the role they play in culture and society.
Falling off the academic track post-graduation, I tumbled into journalism, which I thought would be another notch on my impressive resume of random jobs (ice cream truck driver, phone repair, Christian day care; ask me about it some time). Though I had done some work at the college paper (an unreciprocated crush on the editor; don't ask me about it some time), I had always considered journalism hack writing because I was an arrogant literature snob. To a certain extent I still do, but here I am a decade later, still doing it.
What journalism has taught me is how to extract information and present it in a coherent form. My literature degree taught me to poke in the cracks and muck around with the innards of things. I came to that realization recently while reviewing my latest project, which I hope to announce soon. It's consumed the last six months of my life, and I think it will be the culmination of everything I've set out to do so far.
So for the fourth anniversary of G&P I simply want to thank all of you for sticking around during my learning curve, giving me the platform, time and feedback necessary to shoot for some personal goals. When I am finally ready to announce that project, it will be the result of not only my work, but all of you as well, for the space and support you've provided. I've grown as a writer and a thinker because of your feedback. Thank you for making that happen.

G&P Book Review: From the Minds of Madness

2011-10-12T20:08:00.002-04:00

From the Minds of Madness: The Origins of Heavy Metal Band Names
Blair E. Gibson

I had a lot of misconceptions about the whole music making process as a wee youngun. Among them was the mistaken belief that bands stood together in a studio and recorded albums straight through in order. Perhaps with a short break between the A-side/B-side of the cassette or record version. Another of my misconceptions was that bands actually put a lot of thought into a name to come up with something unique and personal and meaningful (I'm still fascinated by the power of band names). Blair E. Gibson of Regina, Saskatchewan, must have had that same inquisitiveness about metal nomenclature because he's done a yoeman's job of gathering together the stories behind hundreds of band names in his self-published book From the Minds of Madness: The Origins of Heavy Metal Band Names.
Having done my fair share of interviews, I can imagine the hours of labor involved, but after reading through the first dozen or so you realize most metal bands didn't dig that deep when the time came to pick a name. Many of them, as they relate, literally picked a name out of a hat. Others just went for some combination of somewhat scary sounding words. The book also skews heavy toward stoner metal bands, who, unsurprisingly, have stories that probably sound way more entertaining when stoned.
However, when Gibson does get a band to open up, such as Coalesce's intra-band squabbling after they realized the name Breach was already taken, Jucifer's connection to the O.J. Simpson murder trial or Kylesa's Buddhist demonology, that's when things get interesting. Stephen O'Malley's laconic pronouncement that droning doom band Burning Witch was "named after the sound of suffering" or Danny Lilker's restatement of Brutal Truth's rather obvious name, by contrast, don't add much. And while Gibson is to be praised for casting as wide a net as possible, does anybody really care how cock rockers Autograph or Great White settled on their nom de glam?
But those are superficial complaints compared to the glaringly amateur formatting of the book itself. For example, the entirety of pages 16 and 88 are blank as a result of a page break positioning error. And beyond a brief introduction from Gibson and Aaron Stainthorpe of My Dying Bride, there is no other context given and which is sorely missed. The book, which clocks in at less than 150 pages, is an alphabetical recitation of bands and a brief paragraph describing how they arrived at their name.
Fundamentally, I think From the Minds of Madness is a failure of formatting. This would make for a great blog idea (and Gibson does have a blog) but as a book it's briefly diverting skimming material, but I'm not sure anybody will care enough to read it cover to cover, particularly given the omnivorous swath he cuts through metal's multifarious niches.
However, if you're interested, From the Minds of Madness is available for order as an e-book or a paperback here.

[Full disclosure: Gibson sent me a review copy.]

Growers vs. Showers

2011-10-10T08:35:00.005-04:00

There’s a certain cult that springs up around first albums. I’ve often heard people say first albums are the truest example of a band’s musical ambitions, freed from any contract-stipulated deadlines and unhindered by any kind of overt commercial taint. It’s an especially common perception (in my experience) in punk and grind circles where bands are driven as much by youthful bravado as they are by musical acumen.
However, I have noticed that if you plunk any number of grindily minded people in a room (n= >1) and set them talking about their favorite albums, within five minutes a familiar debate will ensue: punk vs. precision. Or put in other terms, growers vs. showers. It's the dividing line between people's preferences and expectations, whether they respond to raw energy and can overlook instrument proficiency or whether they get an intellectual jolt from something more complex and pinpoint.
Showers are the kinds of bands that pretty much lay out all they have to offer within an album or two. They may continue to crank out awesome records, but you don’t go into them expecting to have your musical outlook overturned. Has Agathocles, despite squatting in the studio for lack of an apartment [citation needed], shown any kind of musical growth for all their million albums? Hell, they’re the poster children for the punk side of grind because depending on membership and relative sobriety, it sometimes sounds as though the band is in a desperate fight to avoid total collapse before the end of the song.
Flipside are the growers, the bands, generally more technically gifted, who take a few albums to hit their groove and generally flourish later in life. Brutal Truth were weird and adventurous right out of the box, but they pushed themselves even further straight through what I consider to be their best album, Sounds of the Animal Kingdom. While Brutal Truth may have recycled a few of their prior excursions on Evolution Through Revolution, after a decade hiatus, the band is still not taking the easy route.
Obviously, it's a not a bright line division between growers and showers. Where do Nasum fit? The band obviously grew throughout their career but without necessarily deviating or expanding their trademark sound. Rather, it was a subtle refinement of their strengths. Every nuance of albums like Helvete and Human 2.0 were clearly plotted out. Ditto Norwegian solo maniac Papirmollen. Based on his Parlamentarisk Sodomi material, I would have pegged the guy as a shower because he crusted up old Terrorizer and took it out for a few more laps around the block. But then comes PSUDOKU, which suggests the sky (literally) is the limit for his space grind talents.
Taking these overbroad categories, I'm more curious what they say about our experiences and expectations as a listeners. Music is not a passive experience. What we bring to it is just as important as what bands put on stage or set to tape. I cringe when I hear bands say they don't like to discuss their lyrics because they let the listener draw their own interpretation.I think that's a cheap cop out. However, I will concede there's a certain truth to it. Our experiences and emotional states can drastically influence how we perceive music. My mood is going to be a huge determinant in deciding between Asterisk*'s cerebral philosophy grind or Looking for an Answer's old style beatings. Do I want to relax with Wormrot's 21st Century take on Repulsion or am I prepared to expend a little more energy and wrap my mind around Antigama's fifth dimensional shenanigans.
Am I completely off base here? Do you prefer punk or precision? Are you a grower or a shower? Or, like me, just a grind slut?

You Grind…But Why?: Cloud Rat

2011-10-07T19:36:00.002-04:00

With a musical progression that goes something like Foreigner->Def Leppard->Metallica->Dead Kennedys-> Napalm Death, I completely get where Cloud Rat’s Rorik is coming from when he describes his meandering musical history. Here’s how the promising Michigan up and comer got his grind on and what keeps him coming back.

“I grew up in a really small town (Shepherd, MI), and I wasn't surrounded by a punk/metal scene until I got into my mid/later teens and traveled to other bigger cities,” Rorik said. “My mother was in bar rock bands her whole life, but by the time I was old enough to get into music she was a devout Christian. On a tip from a friend, she ordered some tapes through some Christian distro that I can't remember, and the bands were Vengeance, Mortification, Deliverance, and Tourniquet. At the time I was only about 9 or 10 and didn't really get into the more extreme Vengeance and Mortification stuff, but the other two helped to open my eyes to heavy music (it's funny that Christian music did this, because now I'm of a very different philosophy). I heard Napalm Death for the first time when I was 13, the BBC Sessions on CD. I didn't get it yet.
“It wasn't until I heard Pig Destroyer a couple years later that I started getting into it. After that it was a rapid progression into many extreme music styles, death/grind/doom/hardcore punk/etc. I've been in metal bands, hardcore bands, and rock bands, but nothing has ever got my blood to boil like playing in grindcore bands.
"I guess that I got into grind because to me, it is the fastest, heaviest, and rawest that you can get. And on top of that, to keep it interesting (for me at least), there has to be some sort of real songwriting going on, or some quirk thrown in there that keeps it fresh. And for a style of music that is defined by absolute speed and heaviness, it's amazing how much variety there is! Also, I'm a generally calm person, but I have a lot of intense thoughts and feelings that I can only get out when I play music that is as loud, fast, heavy, and cathartic as I can possibly create.
"I sometimes question my sanity when I'm in a putrid basement with 20 other weirdos, drunk and running into each other, having ear-bleeding noise pounding my ear drums. It's fun to stop and look around at those moments, wondering how you got there. I guess at this point I can't really see it better any other way."

Demo-lition Derby: Busuk

2011-10-05T19:41:00.002-04:00

Busuk
Beats of Rage
There’s a difference between stripping and burlesque. Indonesia’s Simpsons-sampling encrusted grinders Busuk nail a perfect musical bit of burlesque on their three song demo Beats of Rage. They taunt and tease but at the end of it all, you walk away with the sense that you haven’t seen all they have to offer. They haven’t stripped bare their full repertoire of songwriting skills, but they’ve shimmied and shaken enough that you won’t leave feeling disappointed.
Crusty and grindy in ways that may recall Resistant Culture, Busuk have the perfect blend of thick and jagged guitars and a snare that snaps with a palpable thump. Additionally, the singer, recognizing when the band is just on and raging, is smart enough to know when to just STFU and let them play, like on the first half of intro “Blow Your Mind.” That all speaks of an impressive confidence in their cheese grater grind and neither “Dance at the Freaky Circle” nor “Virus Mind” will let you down. The only negative to this demo is that it’s a scant five minutes and a mere three songs, but I haven’t been this thoroughly titillated and teased since Amputee’s two minute lap dance last year. You can download Beats of Rage here.

Panic! At the Discography: Discordance Axis

2011-10-03T21:15:00.003-04:00

Discordance Axis
Perfect Collection: Original Sound Version 1992-1995
Hydra Head
In addition to grasping for grindcore perfection with The Inalienable Dreamless, Discordance Axis also set the bar for fan service with the early efforts compilation Perfect Collection: Original Sound Version 1992-1995. Originally compiled by Devour Records and reissued by Hydra Head the compilation collects first album Ulterior as well as many of their early splits with innovators Hellchild and Capitalist Casualties. The overstuffed 69 track effort even clocks out with the band’s earliest rehearsal recordings, which are probably only of interest to the most die hard of DxAx obsessives (I'm betting the circles would practically overlap in a Venn diagram of "Discordance Axis fans" and "Discordance Axis obsessives"). If Original Sound Version included nothing more than meditative instrumental curveball “My Neighbor Totoro” and guitar scraping screamer “Ruin Trajectory” that would be enough to cement this collection as a mandatory buy. But so much more thought went into every facet of the reissue.
Given the DVD packaging treatment that would become Discordance Axis’ hallmark with The Inalienable Dreamless, the package shines because of the care singer Jon Chang put into his exhaustive liner notes. Where too many bands are content just to dress up discography packages with some rarity photos and maybe a few old show fliers, Chang illuminates each song, offering some unique insight either into its themes, genesis or performance that illustrates the care Discordance Axis put into their craft (something he would add to the reissued Jouhou as well). His self-flagellating assessment of his earliest lyrical efforts is often hilarious and humbling. It’s impressive to watch the continual critical evaluation of the band’s work that propelled them far past their peers. With Jouhou, the discography also includes Chang’s two-part biography of the band, one of the few authoritative sources of information on Discordance Axis, a band that never got their due in their day.
If you had a gun to your head and could only choose on Discordance Axis album, of course you’re going to pick The Inalienable Dreamless. However, anyone interested in the band’s progression or the baby steps of 21st Century grindcore should also boast Original Sound Version and Jouhou in their collection as well. This is exactly what a well conceived discography should be. It serves as the perfect entry point for new fans but includes enough details and rarities that even long time acolytes will have plenty of surprises in store.

You Grind…But Why?: No Gang Colors

2011-09-30T19:32:00.002-04:00

Grindcore’s Overton window has been shifting the last few years as exotic influences have been metastasizing through its blastbeat and punk routine as bands like No Gang Colors have been grafting new parts to grind’s creaky chassis. Parts like hip hop samples and attitude. Joseph Ohegyi, half of No Gang Colors, said it’s simply an extension of his broadminded musical palette seeping into and informing his grind outlook.

“It was a steady progression of taste from general metal styles to the varied extreme metal genres,” he said. “Finding out about new bands through my interest in other bands, leading me through a loose series of phases that amounted to something like: heavy metal -> nu metal -> metalcore -> grindcore -> death metal -> deathcore -> black metal (excepting the non-metal styles I am or was into). Excursions into grindcore introduced me to Pig Destroyer, who are arguably my favorite band, and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. These bands had a big influence over my then-maturing, slightly-drugged outlook. There's an aesthetic confidence behind both projects, a singular sound and style that I was also hearing in some of the older music I was getting into at the time (Brian Eno, David Bowie, The Beach Boys). I read some interviews with J.R. Hayes and he was mentioning his influences from all types of genres (Hank Williams, Geto Boys, Bjork), which was really inspiring. That he could be at the creative apex of his genre and have all these un-metal tastes and influences showed me that it was ok or even preferable not to be so focused on one style. Grindcore's lyrical style was also a crucial influence on me. Lyrically ANb and PxDx (and DxAx among others) were way beyond anyone not making rap. There's a directness and pragmatic meaning/intent in their lyrics that some of the more fantastical or allegorical lyric styles in metal just didn't compare to. They were grounded in the real world and their own experiences more than the escapist fantasies of other styles. I started experimenting with writing grindcore around the same time, more out of a fanatical impulse to mimic these bands (and others like Genghis Tron) than any type of creatively-driven impulse. Then the sound started developing and I found it integrated well with other styles I like, so I've stuck with it. Now it's more of a compositional tool, used to convey specific moods or themes, rather than a style I'm fully immersed in.”

Demo-lition Derby: Colombian Necktie

2011-09-28T19:09:00.002-04:00

Colombian Necktie
Colombian Necktie
I’d wager your average hardcore dude or dudette is not really expecting a tidy 18 minute EP of raging rage to come slamming to a halt for four minutes of placid piano tinkling and atmospheric keyboard swashes like Colombian Necktie does with “Lirit." But it almost makes sense after the wrist cutting catharsis of shattered war vet ode “Joe,” a Tim Singer-style confessional rant full of elliptical lyrical repetition (“I’ve never had to kill my fellow man and I’ll never forget the soldier I watched die”). I don’t know if any of Colombian Necktie’s members have done time in the military, but the world-weary, deadpan delivery rings very true.
Following up on their prior three song EP, Colombian Necktie come roaring back more broad-minded but perhaps a tad less focused. The vocals have expanded to include Ryan Lipynsky black metal seething, the aforementioned Singer-esque rants and even the kind of weird clean vocal digressions beloved of many a post-Jupiter Cave In fan. While, musically Colombian Necktie feel free to explore musical digressions (again, “Lirit”) there are enough other improvements (the savage coming of age tale “Larvae” burbles with enough teenage bile and loathing to fuel nightmares of the abortion scene in Cronenberg’s The Fly) that this EP is a keeper. Hie thee unto their Bandcamp page for more.

Words From the Exit Wound

2011-09-26T19:50:00.016-04:00

Andrew at 17 (perhaps facetiously): Pffft. Lyrics are sooooooo overrated.

Andrew at 33 (perhaps despairingly): Sweet Christ, these lyrics are just sooooooo awful.

The cookie monster vocal was the greatest thing to happen to metal, hardcore and grind because (let’s all be honest) most metal lyrics are absolutely terrible. They're full of pathetic posturing and insincere braggadocio. It’s often better not to know what they’re screaming at you. Metal and grind have become a tired mish-mash of completely interchangeable pablum, recycling a miserly handful of topics – religion, politics, horror flicks, gore, hatred – that have been denuded of any meaning by 25 years of repetition. Those topics, enjoyable in their own right if done well, can be frustrating because there’s no emotional honesty involved. Listeners are held at emotional arm’s length by safe and conventional abstract topics. There’s no vulnerability and no risk involved. It bothers me because I find the older I get, the less tolerant I am of shitty, moronic lyrics. So that must mean lyricists are getting worse because clearly I’m exactly the same person that I was at 17, right? I’m left craving someone who has something fresh and honest to say.

And I know exactly what you’re going to say next: But, Andrew, you’ll say, it’s only mindless entertainment. Stop being such a picky, arty farty douchenozzle.

That’s the same defense I hear on film blogs when somebody points out Michael Bay is not fit to direct a kindergarten Christmas play. But entertaining doesn’t have to mean vapid. If you’ll indulge me as I turn to my muse, Roger Ebert, one more time, I was reminded of something he said in a tribute to Pulp Fiction.
“Watching many movies, I realize that all of the dialogue is entirely devoted to explaining or furthering the plot, and no joy is taken in the style of language and idiom for its own sake,” he said. “There is not a single line in Pearl Harbor you would want to quote with anything but derision. Most conversations in most movies are deadly boring—which is why directors with no gift for dialogue depend so heavily on action and special effects.”
Too many times grindcore lyrics are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor’s dialog. The blastbeats and riffs become the equivalent of Michael Bay’s explosions and jump cuts, pretty distractions from the central hollowness. There’s no reason grindcore lyricists can’t aspire to something better, more lasting, more insightful. I’m longing for musicians who can connect lyrically on an emotional level, lyricists who have something interesting to say about the human condition. I don’t want grind bands to start pretending they are Sartre or something, but I would like to hear more lyrics that at least have some depth and insight.
Too much of grind is outwardly focused: it’s really good at telling you what’s wrong with you and everyone else. It’s never been so good at self examination or vulnerability. So when you find lyricists who are willing to tackle the spectrum of human emotions – and in less than 90 seconds! – it’s worth taking a moment to praise them.

Domestic Power ViolenceWhile I manage to enjoy recent Agoraphobic Nosebleed offerings for what they are, it does bother me that they seem to have bought into their own lyrical shtick. Instead of honestly capturing the dinginess and despair of contemporary existence, they’re too busy trying to shock and provoke for no other reason than to get a reaction (I call this “Seth Putnam Syndrome;” look for it in DSM-5). It’s doubly disappointing because I know how clinically incisive ANb’s various component parts can be. Take one of my personal favorites, “Blind Hatred Finds a Tit” from early touchstone Frozen Corpse Stuffed With Dope. It’s a horrifyingly causal and – most disturbingly – accurate vacation in the skull of an abuser. While J. Randall’s lyrics eventually become more “J. Randally” with digressions into toddler abortions and the like, the opening two lines are the most chilling snapshot of an unthinkingly brutal psyche:
“You let me hit you, so I won’t touch the children/ So how hard do I have to fuckin’ beat you to have a crack at the kids?”

Roses are Red, Hyperviolets are Blue
Prowler in the Yard is not only one of the two greatest breakup letters ever set to music (Jane Doe being the other, natch), but Pig Destroyer open it with what might be best first line in grind history: “Semen tastes like gunmetal, she said smiling.” (Wait, what?) I can’t tell you the hours I’ve spend pondering the first line of “Cheerleader Corpses,” but it’s later in the album, “Hyperviolet,” where you get a sense of why J.R. Hayes may have taken the split so hard. The song is a loving (relatively speaking, this is Pig Destroyer after all) ode to a special lady friend. Though the accustomed menace lurks in the lyrics, Hayes also manages to conjure up a striking tenderness:
“Traced in wet sand her name in perfect cursive/ a love letter to the crescent moon/ by tomorrow it will be gone, I told her/ there is no tomorrow, she said/ I can feel her in a bikini of coiled snakes dancing to the hiss of the wind/ postcards from a paradise in flames/ she used to be so right/ so right about everything.”

Nutless WonderAs with J.R. Hayes, Discordance Axis’ Jon Chang was able to convert interpersonal failures into penetrating, incisive art. Though it’s shrouded in layers of metaphor and striking visuals, Chang’s “Castration Rite” was a purgative self-flagellation that set the tone for the remainder of The Inalienable Dreamless. It manages to blend self-mutilation with nods to both William Faulkner and the Bible in way that stands as both honest and individual. Maybe we shouldn’t let Chang handle sharp objects for a while:
“An axis in motion distributing ran/ Into the poverty of my ego/ Distortion screaming streaming sending/ Eurhythmic continuity skips no double taps/ Split open my chest and cut out my lungs/ Sew me back up just the same/ A stigmata a mutilation/ Your blood dies with me I can’t help but laugh/ I can’t help/Help but laugh/As I take/ Knife in hand/ And castrate my fucking self/ Would god I could die for thee/ O Absalom my son”

FAIL
From the outset, Richard Johnson has grounded Drugs of Faith in concrete realities. That’s never so apparent as on “Never Fail,” leadoff tune from the band’s eponymous debut EP. In yet another tale about a failed relationship (I’m starting to question grinder’s social skills), Johnson performs an impressive bit of lyrical legerdemain by positing it from the perspective of the guilt wracked rejecter rather than, as is more typical, the miserable rejectee. It’s not you, it’s me, but it hurts just the same:
“I remain under the covers forever reliving the curse of that elusive outcome which inside I cherish so much/ I’m the one with whom you haven’t a chance/ I have to respect my feelings/ And at the end of the night I return to my bed alone/ At the end of the night I’ll return to my bed alone.”

That’s Not a Knife; This is a Knife
Taking the Silent Hill games as a controlling metaphor, Body Hammer’s Ryan Page penned an impressive ode to isolation and despair on Jigoku’s midpoint song “Greatknife.” A deft blend of arresting imagery wrapped in oblique metaphors, Page manages to mimic the deceptive mix of brevity and simplicity that undergirds the haiku tradition (complete with a leftfield lyrical twist at the end). In just a few words he so evocatively conjures emotions out of listeners:
“Running through the darkness/ girls are pretty colorful/ one room leads to more of the same/ if I traced my footsteps you could/ follow my eyes/ a rusty iron gate shuts”

You Grind…But Why?: Jerry Flores

2011-09-23T20:47:00.004-04:00

Some men are born to grind. Some pursue grind. Others have grind thrust upon them. That's pretty much the tale of Excruciating Terror and Bloody Phoenix guitarist Jerry Flores.
Excruciating Terror was one of those transitional artists in my life. Along with Phobia, they represented my first forays into grind beyond the obligatory Napalm Death/Carcass axis. Divided We Fall helped plunge me down the rabbit hole of grindcore, sparking a lifetime addiction. After Excruciating Terror’s dissolution, guitarist Flores kept the grind coming with current outfit Bloody Phoenix.
When I ask Flores why he chose the path of blast beats, his answer is just a pithy and concise as his songwriting.

“I didn't choose grindcore,” he said. “What I was playing was considered grindcore once the term was coined. I just had a need for speed growing up listening to music. Always seeking faster music. You just end up playing what you like.”

G&P Review: Truth Be Known

2011-09-21T19:42:00.002-04:00

Truth Be Known
Asphyxihate
Mourning Sound
I, apparently, have a bit of a potty mouth because at least once or twice a month Blogger’s stat tracker informs me that somebody searching for “punishment fuck” mistakenly finds their way here. But not even my prodigious proclivity for profanity can compete with Singapore’s “beer grinding death” band Truth Be Known who devote a good chunk of their 18 minute EP to telling people to fuck off and how to go about doing it.
I was able to ponder their four letter acumen because, unfortunately, my mind wandered throughout their nine song trip through Bolt Thrower’s back cataloge by way of rock and roll swagger. Things start off strong with the thrilling sustained guitar notes and martial pounding drums of opener “Men in White,” and all 25 seconds of “Sucks to Be You” is a stilettoed goose to the kidneys. But I never felt like Truth Be Known ever showed me more than those early flourishes. Take for example, “Rock and Roll Baby,” a death-vocalled stab and ’80s styled punk rock complete with declarations that “I’ll live my own life with no fucking regrets” (because it had been at least 30 seconds since they’d carpet F-bombed you) that degenerates into an overly familiar drum breakdown married to a riff that sounds like it was lifted from “Caught in a Mosh.”
Truth be known, I’m sure Truth Be Known would probably do a great job whipping up a pit while you wait for the headlining bands to play, but Keitzer already rules this turf this year.
[Full disclosure: The band sent me a download.]

Demo-lition Derby: Extreme Mental Abuse

2011-09-19T20:00:00.002-04:00

I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my forefinger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.

Joseph Conrad
Heart of Darkness
1910

Extreme Mental Abuse
Extreme Mental Abuse
There’s an unfortunate hollowness to both the conception and execution of Extreme Mental Abuse, a side project of Mark Magill of the band SSS. The 20 songs, banged out in 18 minutes, feel rote, as though this were an exercise in genre rather than an honest expression of some innate emotion. Combining Unseen Terror’s infamous bumblebee guitar tone with Excruciating Terror-style attack, Extreme Mental Abuse rail against “Corrupt Government,” “First World Tyranny” and “One World Government,” falling back on conceits that have grown contemptible with familiarity, passed through the hands of several generations of likeminded musicians.
I could forgive well worn lyrics if the music gave me that necessary adrenal jolt, but Extreme Mental Abuse just lack any sense of urgency. While the occasional tune like “Global Stratospheric Obliteration” slams crust into grind like a punk-based Large Hadron Collider, releasing sparks of energy, the rest of the album largely feels monotonous and one-dimensional, lashed to a rickety sounding drum (machine?).
There’s a lot of grind getting banged out all across the globe these days, so it’s going to take a lot to stand out from the slavering hordes of blastbeaten barbarians. This just isn’t lighting up my mojo. You can check it out for yourself at Extreme Mental Abuse’s Bandcamp page.

You Grind…But Why?: Richard Johnson

2011-09-16T08:11:00.004-04:00

When people call Richard Johnson the Grindfather, they’re not bullshitting. The guy kicked off the drum machine grind phenomenon with the legendary Enemy Soil (midwifing two-thirds of Pig Destroyer in the process), helped drive the sound to perfection in Agoraphobic Nosebleed and can also be spotted getting his grind ’n’ roll on with Drugs of Faith. Johnson has been a pretty integral fixture in modern grind’s evolutionary sweep and ensures its vitality by quietly mentoring young musicians as well. So I was especially interested in hearing his back story.

“I started getting into metal, HC and punk in high school,” Johnson said. “I was less into escapism like comic books and more into the extremes, and I felt that grindcore was more extreme than anything else. I also had a love for HC and punk that was a different love than for metal (death metal), and I could see grind was rooted in the former. Napalm Death became one of my favorite bands—well, in the top five, anyway.
“I used to have the Live Corruption VHS tape in my VCR more than any other video. Nuclear Blast, I think it was, had a cassette bootleg of the audio that they were selling in their catalog. Not the official live album, but the audio of the home video, interviews and all.
“The way I like to put it, and I think I took this from Wadge when that guy said it in my zine, is that sometimes you need a kick in the pants, and World Downfall by Terrorizer will do it for you. I love the feel of the blast beat married with crunching the three-string power chord.”

Blast(beat) from the Past: Nuclear Winter

2011-09-14T20:06:00.002-04:00

Nuclear Winter
Abomination Virginborn
Blastbeat Mailmurder
2003
Greek duo Nuclear Winter sound like they’ve been slinking up the same left hand path and chanting the same ultimate incantations that have long driven Entombed and Vader on this 7-inch of old style death murkiness. Another shoot growing off the StraightHate/Dephosphorus family tree, Nuclear Winter paid tribute to the past masters of dismal death over the course of three songs.
Unlike a lot of death metal, which insists on unremitting brutality and technical acumen, Nuclear Winter recognized that atmosphere was often a more important component. The band is perfectly comfortable cranking along at cruising speeds with the top down, enjoying the feel of the wind in their hair. They up the tempo to an organic blastbeat only as an accent rather than the spine of the song. That means they rely on the authentically charnel old school guitar tones to carry the songs. However, there’s a thinness that make the lack of a second guitar or bass palpable. With the added texture additional instrumentation would have provided, these three songs would really crush. But Nuclear Winter make do with what they have available. There are no drum triggers, the blastbeats sound human, the riffs chainsaw, the art is suitably Hellhammered and the guitars are full of those pinched squealy sounds. This is death metal the way I remember it.

[Full disclosure: Blastbeat Mailmurder sent me a review copy.]

Demo-lition Derby: Gozer

2011-09-12T20:35:00.002-04:00

Gozer
WARNING: Product May Contain Gozer
As with Mumakil’s Behold the Failure, the title of Gozer’s demo may be all the warning some people need, depending on their taste preferences. The Ohio band starts with an admirable conceit: there’s not nearly enough Bill Murray in grindcore. So they lard their 17 songs with a rash of choice sampled Murray-isms (amusingly, given the name, none from Ghostbusters). It’s a clever enough proposition that further underlines my dismay with how most other bands interweave movie bits into their songs.
So Gozer tee up what should be a fairly fun romp through grinding silliness, but their concept got lost in the execution. Unfortunately, the guitars sound like the demos I used to make by running my amp head straight into a cassette deck and hitting “record.” It’s a buzzy, blurry swamp that wars with the drum (machine?), making it hard to enjoy the music. That’s a shame because Gozer do pull a few neat tricks, such as the hopscotching panning pranks on “When Sweetmeat Met White Trash.” Additionally, Gozer are far too reliant on a tedious, stuttered chugging move to carry their songs forward from one musical idea to the next.
Overall, Gozer is amateurish but inoffensive. It’s a clever conceit that screams for better execution and a little helpful editing. You can check out their demo and a few other efforts for free at their Bandcamp page, but warning: the product may contain Gozer.

You Grind…But Why?: Digby Pearson

2011-09-09T20:34:00.003-04:00

There’s a pretty good chance that none of us would be here getting our grind on if Digby Pearson hadn’t stepped up to get the blastbeaten ball rolling. The Earache majordomo is directly responsible for bringing the first, defining wave of grinding goodness to the BPM-starved masses. Napalm Death, Carcass, Terrorizer and Brutal Truth all owe their careers to Pearson’s backing. Regardless of what you may think of his post-grind forays into other musical niches and the public falling out with many of those early bands, the guy was there and played a crucial role at a time when nobody thought there was even a market, let alone a name, for this stuff. So what got his grind gears growling nearly 25 years ago?

“The motive for what the bands created and what Earache supported in the early days was pretty much just to inflict the maximum NOISE possible onto the general public,” Pearson said. “Maybe even cause the demise of all ‘normal’ music, that would have been a bonus. I had some lofty, crazy ideas back then, to be sure, and was very single-minded and obsessive about it, even with scant resources.
“At no point was a recognised genre that would become highly popular envisioned. That was a laughable concept in 1986-8.
“People forget it was more or less avant-garde, highly experimental music during that explosive first couple of years. From Godflesh to Carcass, the motive was to warp minds.
“There were some ‘noisy’ atonal anarcho/HC punk bands around, even some extremely noisy indie acts...but Earache encouraged its bands to push the envelope way further into extreme metallised noise --and to hell with the consequences.
“Scum itself was described as ‘hyperspeed thrash’ by me on its release in 1987 (because thrash was the then-current most extreme form of metal).
“ ‘Grindcore’ first appeared as a genre description in September 1989 on the sticker on Earache’s Grindcrusher comp.”

Demo-lition Derby: Per Capita

2011-09-07T19:43:00.003-04:00

Per Capita
The Damage Done
Bands like Germany’s Per Capita are the reason I keep blogging. This band has its shit nicely together on demo The Damage Done. They lead with a chipped-tooth bass that rocks a distinctive, crusty Vulgar Pigeons kinda vibe. It’s a perfect pinpoint that comes flying out the gate on the Dawkins-checking “The God Delusion.” It both propels and defines Per Capita’s brash confrontation.
But what makes me happiest is that just as soon as you think you’ve got a handle on Per Capita, they start tossing in d-beat theatrics stolen from any number of bands that may have once counted Tomas Lindberg among their membership. “Resignation” liberally borrows from Skitsystem while the gang choruses of “No White Supremacy” could have been lifted from “Dead Weight” on Disfear’s Live the Storm.
Mixing up d-beat and grind is not going to win any prizes for originality, but Per Capita have a firm grasp on what makes each sub-genre work and how they can best be blended. With 10 rocking originals and a spot on Dropdead cover, The Damage Done is definitely a demo I’d recommend downloading.

G&P Review: GROG

2011-09-05T08:11:00.003-04:00

Women’s lack of rights has nothing to do with not being allowed to vote or to be judges – those matters don’t constitute any sort of right. No, it has to do with the fact that in sexual relations she’s not the man’s equal. She doesn’t have the right to avail herself of the man or abstain from him, according to her desire, to select the man she wants rather than be the one who’s selected. You may say that would be monstrous. Very well. Then the man shouldn’t have these rights, either. The way things are at present, the woman is deprived of the rights possessed by the man. And, in order to compensate for this, she acts on the man’s sensuality, forces him into subjection by means of sensuality, so that he’s only formally the one who chooses – in actual fact it’s she who does the choosing. And once she has mastered this technique, she abuses it and acquires terrible power over men.

Leo Tolstoy
“The Kreutzer Sonata”
1887

GROG
Scooping the Cranial Insides
Murder Records
I’m always am/conf-used by porno/gore bands that thank their wives and girlfriends in the liner notes. I try to imagine how I would react to having songs about gang rape and bukkake dedicated to me, but it’s a wonderfully bizarre world and I’m sure there’s someone out there who finds it flattering. Assuming the Sofia that GROG-ster Alexandre Ribeiro thanks “for what was, what is, and what shall be” in the liner notes is the same Sofia who contributes orgasmic groans to the rectal violation tale “Anal Core,” I’m just going to concede that Rule 34 is still in effect and then try to scrub that image from my cortex.
Portugual’s GROG grind with a brutal death edge (the chestburster vocals and unrelenting/monotonous double bass) and they wouldn’t be half bad if they weren’t perverting all that talent in services of songs named “10 Cummandments,” “Sphincterized (Materialized in Shit)” and “Hanged by the Cojones,” which comes closest to something identifiable as humor.
Because the band clearly has the chops to aspire to better. Witness the opener “Toia Mai,” a Maori tribal chant/percussion number that sounds like something Sepultura or Neurosis would have experimented with in the 1990s before exploding into first true song “Beyond the Freakish Scene,” a slippery sinuous slash of grind and death pounding. But the retardedly juvenile lyrical detritus and a bit of same-iness to the songs (just about every one ends with the same resonating cymbal crash) does wear over 37 minutes.
GROG can blast with the pack and can bust out a decent tune (“Acephalic Meatgrind Orgy Hibernation” sneaks and snarls in a way that sets it apart from the album’s all-blast ethos) and that best that can be said about their lyrical content is that the vocals render them completely unintelligible.

[Full disclosure: The band sent me a review copy.]

You Grind…But Why?: Takafumi Matsubara

2011-09-02T19:51:00.003-04:00

No guitarist in recent years has proved more challenging, more intriguing and generally more awesome than Takafumi Matsubara who made a name for himself in Mortalized before tag-teaming with Jon Chang for GridLink and Hayaino Daisuki. His playing is relentlessly technical and endlessly intricate but never loses sight of the musical endgame. This is the musician Chang, a notorious perfectionist, told me has pushed him further and more relentlessly than any other in his career. The guy has also given one of the most insightful and inspiring odes to grind and all of its possibilities you’re likely to hear.

“I love speed,” Matsubara-san said. “And grindcore is free music for me. So it is the best way for me to make something. I hope my songs are art. I cannot write novels and cannot make movies. So I write songs and play the guitar.”