Sadness Will Prevail

There was a period in the mid- to late-'90s/early-'00s where you couldn't hit up a show without tripping over Moonspell (them and fucking Shadows Fall). They seemingly opened for everyone. I'm too lazy to actually go back and check, but I seem to recall them kicking off shows for Samael, Amorphis, In Flames and Opeth in the span of about two years. Perhaps it's sheer bluntforce repetition, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the Portuguese doomsters (particularly their more industrial-tinged efforts) and every couple years or so I'll break out the few Moonspell albums I have stashed in my closet.
That said, I do not like mixing up my gothic boo-hooing with my death metal and grindcore. Some things just aren't right. But from time to time otherwise sensible punks and metallions who should know better decided to go all black nail polish on us. Here are a couple of the more egregious examples. Keep in mind only one of these bands is actually supposed to sound like this.

Opium of the Masses


Is there some sort of Poe's Law for goth videos? Because I'm pretty sure if you weren't already familiar with Moonspell you'd be pretty sure that's a parody. Nope. Straight serious stuff, right there. Not my favorite Moonspell song, but it sets up the horrors that are about to come next.

Run Far, Far Away



Resistant Culture already have a great gimmick working. They seamlessly stitch together bits of punk, crust, grind and indigenous music into an instantly recognizable, unique whole. They even boasted Jesse Pintado among their membership; that's pretty fucking solid, right there. But then on second album All One Struggle they suddenly got all Moonspell on us with sixth track "Runaway." I know it's supposed to actually be a song about, ya know, running way, but baritone crooning about the pleasures of the night just feels one precariously short step away from a Stephenie Meyer novel. I'm sure none of us wants to go there.

I Feel Your Pain



Vader is absolutely my favorite death metal band, but what the fuck just raped my ears? Sigh, yes at the end of their second album, De Produndis, the Polish institution for some inexplicable reason decided to tack on a cover of Depeche Mode's "I Feel You" as a bonus track. C'mon it's Depeche Mode! I don't know what's worse, that a great occult death metal band would cover Depeche Mode without the world exploding in some sort of musical matter-antimatter collision or Peter's unforgivably bad attempt at goth vocals. We will never speak of this again.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Round 2 Week 1

It may have taken extra innings, but we're ready to get back into it. I asked you who made the most persuasive arguments and here's who won the masses over:

Yes I know this wasn't actually Perpetual Strife's vote (actually, he voted the opposite way, but it was enough to get Shane Bywaters thinking:
"I'd totally die before I call Psyopus a grindcore band, but I'm totally enjoying this tom-foolery of fretboard silliness. Reminds me of one of my most hidden dirty secrets: I like Beneath the Massacre's first EP. Something about sterile sounding guitars flipping the fuckout. "

So Arp moves on.

Meanwhile, Will Hubbell got down with Desiccated Veins' reasoning:
"Huh, kind of a tough one. Dick Johnson definitely did his part to shepherd grind safely out of the '90s, and for better or worse, Borja taught us what meaty-as-fuck Discordance Axis riffs sound like. Maybe it's 'cause I'm guilty about sending one Rob Marton worshipper through already, or maybe it's because Fractured Theology is sounding really good right now, but I'm gonna vote Johnson."

So that means Johnson will live to fight another day.

So here's the opening frame of round two. Check out the reseeded brackets here. Here's this week's matchups. As always, you've got until Sunday to make your case.

The Old Guard
1. Olivo/Freeman (Repulsion) v. 4. Pintado (Terrorizer/Napalm Death/Resistant Culture)
Grind from the grave vs. the guy who went to his too soon.

The Innovators
1. Procopio/Baglino (Human Remains) v. 6. Papirmollen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU)
I think this might be the most fascinating of the bunch: the guys who pretty much invented grind weirdness vs. the guy who perfected it for the 21st century.

The Punks
1. Burda/McLachlan (Phobia) v. 6. Beau (Insect Warfare)
Classic California punky grind vs. classic sounding Texas punky grind.

The Technicians
1. Matsubara (Mortalized/GridLink/Hayaino Daisuki) v. 7. Rainwater (Noisear/Kill the Client)
You all broke my heart when Rainwater somehow beat Rob Marton (I forgive you). Can the up and coming underdog take it two impossible triumphs in a row by taking out Matsubara as well?

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

You Grind…But Why?: Resistant Culture

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!”

This is Their Community: Showing Resistant Culture Reverence and Respect

You can’t dip your metatarsals in the pool of punk and metal anymore without coming across someone blathering about how corporate rock really sucks. But for all the DIY posturing is it really any different? Basement origins aside, aren’t Century Media, Relapse and Earache just the corporate media model writ small? When your newest, professionally shot video was being introduced on MTV2 by Jamey Jasta, just how underground were you really?
However, the same digital demons that are flaying the professional recording industry alive have also democratized the means of production (if you want to be textbook Marxist about it) for bands, meaning going the DIY route is easier than ever.
In their nearly two decade existence trolling the seedy underside of Los Angeles’ punk and metal scene, Resistant Culture have picked up a trick or two about doing it themselves while honing their grinding crust and crusty grind. They run their own label to release their own records as part of their commitment to keeping everything in-house.
“We all come from DIY backgrounds and have a strong DIY ethic,” the band said (questions were answered collectively, they told me). “It goes back to the punk ethic of taking responsibility to make your dreams come true, whatever they may be. It also resonates with the modern multimedia technology landscape. Now that the tools exist, there's no excuse for a band that's passionate to share their music with the world not to take full advantage. We do our own recording, art, web development, e-commerce, booking, promotion, accounting, and we've developed partnerships with other indie labels for global distribution.”
Sounds like fun, right? Don’t forget the band slipped the word “responsibility” in there as well. That means nobody’s going to be able to blame label meddling if things go wrong either.
“Because we record ourselves, it can be hard to let the final mix go as you're always trying to keep tweaking the tracks to make them better, but the triumph is that by the time you're finally done, you're happy with the product,” they said.
What struck me recently during a Resistant Culture binge is just how damn positive the band remains, particularly on All One Struggle, despite drawing on several centuries of European oppression of indigenous culture for lyrical inspiration. And while that’s certainly a focus, the band said, their vision is far more inclusive than you may first imagine.
“What shaped the vision for the album was the idea that all life in today's world is engaged in the struggle to survive,” according to Resistant Culture. “The illusion of separateness makes it easy for people to ignore the voices of different ethnicities, species, genders, etc., while at a deeper level of being, we're all connected and we all require the same clean air, food, water, etc. to survive on this Earth. Our intention is to promote the idea that in order to survive in this toxic world, we don't all have to become homogeneous and lose our identities and subscribe to a single ideology or carry the same flag, rather as Subcomandante Marcos said, we'd like to see 'a world where many worlds fit.' In other words, we can recognize and respect our differences, but work together when/where ever possible to create a better future. By recognizing that all struggles for liberation, autonomy, self-determination, justice, rights, etc. are one, we can foster an attitude of solidarity that will strengthen all movements.”
I’ll not deny my early interest in Resistant Culture was driven at least partly by Jesse Pintado’s participation post-Napalm Death. Whether as a guitarist on Welcome to Reality or drafting Resistant Culture’s Tony Rezhawk to front a reunited Terrorizer, Pintado — just by virtue of who he was — helped raise the band’s profile significantly.
“Jesse's style blended well with the direction of the band,” Resistant Culture said. “He was stoked to be doing some d-beat, crust, and punk mixed with brutal grindcore and metal. And of course, he added his signature style of guitar playing to the some of the songs. Unfortunately for the most part, all the work we did with Jesse including the live shows went unnoticed by the metal establishment, but for some reason all this is being unearthed now, which is a good thing.”
According to the band, Pintado also melded well with Resistant Culture’s unique take on indigenous issues that undergirds the grind.
“We also shared a spiritual bond as he was able to connect with and express his indigenous roots through the tribal aspects of the band. We actually got to talking about bringing him into RC at a traditional native bear dance ceremony. After playing a few gigs we actually did a tribal ‘unplugged’ set with him at an anti-war protest. It was awesome to bring the spirit of metal into the spirit of community and social/cultural consciousness. It was an honor to work with him, and he'll always be with us in spirit and heart.”
It's all one struggle. Reverence and respect.

A D-Beat Dilemma

Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.
Dun dat.
Dun dun dat.

Punk and metal types have been meditating over that percussive koan for the better part of three decades now without exhausting the zen depths of the deceptively simple drum pattern.
I doubt Discharge could have ever foreseen the staying power of their signature sound 30 years ago when they were banging out crusty punk classics in a squalid London squat. Born of a punk frustration with rampant unemployment with no prospect of a better future under the velvet frocked grip of England’s Iron Lady (the Sex Pistols were not exaggerating when they wailed they had “no future”), Discharge, unlike many of their predecessors and contemporaries, distilled that hard scrabble frustration into 90 second screeds driven by one of the most infectious and propulsive punk beats ever devised.

Discharge – “It’s No TV Sketch”

But here comes my dilemma: for all of Discharge’s range and staying power over the past decades, they were not a band that I ever heard mentioned when I ran with bored, disaffected American suburban punks. In fact, it wasn’t until I got heavily into grindcore that the British progenitors ever got name-checked with any kind of regularity or reverence. For a band that’s been so influential – they spawned their own devoted, vibrant and ongoing cult of soundalikes, ferfuckssake – it’s a troubling lacuna in traditional punk circles.

Anti Cimex – “Victims of a Bombraid”

Perhaps that was just a function of the particular punk circles in which I traveled. (Keeping in mind, of course, we're dealing with a sampling size of n=1.) While we never embarrassed ourselves like some of our forerunners by busting out the Union Jack as a fashion statement, we were heavily into British punk: Sex Pistols, the Clash, Rudimentary Peni, Subhumans, Exploited. But no Discharge.

Doom – “Nazi Die”

I have a deep, deep love for the Dead Kennedys, the first punk band to really capture my imagination and address my desire to engage real-world problems in a direct way rather than the generic sloganeering that characterized so much of punk and thrash at the time. Rivaled only by Rudimentary Peni, Jello and crew are probably still my favorite punk band. Generic claims to “stop war” and “fuck the system” just don’t have the same bite as calling out the perpetrators by name. But for all their influence, you don’t see DK's idiosyncrasies endlessly aped the way you do with Discharge.

Warcry – “White Flag”

I don’t know what it is about Discharge that has so captured our collective imaginations. There’s just something compelling about their simplicity and singlemindedness and it becomes blindingly obvious why they have such a hold over grindcore and the other punky, speed-obsessed fringes of the metal world. But those traits should translate to traditional punks as well.

Venomous Concept – “A Case of the Mondays”

Is my experience an isolated event, a strange confluence of influences and circumstances? Are there punk circles where Discharge are regularly given their due (outside of Scandinavia?)? My experience has been metalheads tend to be more open-minded about punk than the other way around, a strange inversion of where things generally stood during the crossover heyday of the late 1980s. Why does Discharge seem to have greater prominence among the metallic hordes than the punk throngs? Anybody got an answer?

Resistant Culture – “Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing”

G&P Review: Resistant Culture

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

Viva la Revolucion: Five Mandatory Latino Grind Albums

Terrorizer
World Downfall
Earache
1989
We’ve already deemed this the seventh greatest grind album of all time, so not too much more needs to be said.
World Downfall is a blistering tour de force of straight forward punk guitar over blast beat goodness. Almost as famous for the band members’ subsequent bands, Terrorizer were not only L.A.’s premiere grinders, but America’s best entry into the blast beat sweepstakes during the 1980s as well.
Terrorizer’s influence is undeniable. You can hear World Downfall’s influence in every straight forward, grimy grind band that came after them.

Nausea
Crime Against Humanity
Wild Rags
1991
After Terrorizer posthumously recorded World Downfall, frontman Oscar Garcia leaped into his new project. Rounding up members of Majesty and other local bands, Nausea crossed up proto-grind with bits of crust and a few industrial flourishes to firmly establish Garcia was not about to rest on his Terrorizer laurels. Though Crime Against Humanity is the band’s only full length to date, Garcia and Co. remain active, periodically playing along side like minded bangers such as Venomous Concept and Phobia.

Resistant Culture
Welcome to Reality
S.O.S. Records
2005
The first album G&P set its hand to reviewing. After a not so amicable parting of the ways with Napalm Death, guitarist Jesse Pintado hooked up with this all Latino ensemble, formerly known as Resistant Militia and featuring Tony Rezhawk, who would stand in for Oscar Garcia when Pintado reunited Terrorizer just before his untimely death. While Darker Days Ahead failed to revive Terrorizer’s glory days, Welcome to Reality is a stunning bit of forward looking metal noise, mixing prime grind with native chants and rhythms to create a startling original sound. The band’s lyrical concepts and political stances on the behalf of America’s marginalized native peoples are also refreshing.
If your ancestors sold small box infected blankets to indigenous peoples, Resistant Culture would like to have a word with you.

Excruciating Terror
Divided We Fall
Pessimiser
1997
Other than Phobia, no other first wave grind band was nearly as crusty and punked out as Excruciating Terror. This trio blasted out bass-heavy, primal thumpings that could peel the siding off your house from a couple blocks over.
Though they only recorded a couple of albums during their brief lifespan, Excruciating Terror went out on a high note with 1997’s Divided We Fall, a pissed off diatribe about the world’s many failings spread over 21 60-second outbursts. This is a band that has never gotten the proper credit for their place in grindcore’s annals, and Divided We Fall is an excellent place to get acquainted with one of the scene’s elder statesmen.

Bloody Phoenix
War, Hate and Misery
625 Thrash
2007
After Excruciating Terror fizzled, guitarist Jerry Flores roared right back with another largely-Latino ensemble that whips out snarling, stabbing bursts of grindcore bliss.
Picking up where his last band left off, Flores and his team are setting the bar even higher with a new batch of songs that easily rival the genre’s forerunners.
We’re all for seeing grind mutate and explore new possibilities, but it’s also nice to see someone keeping the home fires of the old school burning.

G&P review: Resistant Culture

Resistant Culture
Welcome to Reality
SOS Records

Trust me and go ahead and skip to track two; you’re literally missing nothing. I don’t know what marketing genius decided to bury 30 minutes of tribal-inflected grind this good behind a half hour track of silence, but it is a real dick move.
Resistant Culture, ne Resistant Militia, has been kicking around the greater Los Angeles grind/punk underworld for the better part of two decades, but the band’s profile got a boost in 2005 when they enlisted the guitar talents of Jesse Pintado, who had recently vacated Napalm Death
And Welcome to Reality (not be confused with the EP of the same name), reissued by SOS Records almost a year after Pintado’s death, is everything the last Terrorizer record should have been.
Not to be dismissed as Terrorizer Mk. II, Resistant Culture guitarist Katina clearly has a copy of World Downfall in her collection. But the band spikes its punked out grind with squalls of guitar skronk (“Misery”), interlaced tribal chants (“The Struggle Continues” and “Silent Predator”), dollops of thrash (“Sticks and Stones” ) and the all too rare grindcore guitar solo (“Forced Conformity”).
Vocalist Anthony aka Tony Militia aka Tony Rezhawk, replace Oscar Garcia’s replacement on Darker Days Ahead and one of that album’s scant bright spots, has been a growling voice for American Indian tribal causes and that focus infuses Welcome to Reality. If your ancestors might have had something to do with selling small pox-infected blankets to Native Americans 200 years ago, he’d like to have a word with you.
Welcome to Reality may not be able to compete with Napalm Death’s hooky grind, but the guitars bite with a hunger that rival’s Pintado’s previous crew’s most recent output. Katina intertwines her buzzing, scraping riffs with Pintado’s punk blasts, topping the snappy sounding drums and distorted bass crust.
While Pintado’s presence looms large over the band, Resistant Culture carved out their own space between grind’s stultifying strictures to hammer out a distinct sound that also stands as a fitting epitaph for a grindcore stalwart.