Mimetic: Attack of the Discordance Axis Clones

If The Inalienable Dreamless were a child, it would be old enough to start high school this year.
In the nearly decade and a half since Discordance Axis gifted the world a masterpiece and then summarily retired, the New Jersey trio has gone from that band that few had heard of and even fewer liked to a significant touchstone in grindcore. A whole generation of grind musicians has grown up with Dave Witte’s tendon-testing speed, Jon Chang’s upper register screech and pop cultural fixations and particularly Rob Marton’s uniquely phrased guitar parts as part of the musical heritage they have inherited. That influence is coming to fruition as a recent of wave of Discordance Axis clones.
“I think that we identified with Discordance Axis because they're different from other grindcore bands,” said Jonathan Thompson, whose band, Vertigo Index, cribbed both their name and style from one of Jouhou’s songs. “Despite the fact that they do adhere in some sense to the sort of the grindcore blast-heavy template, they really managed to do so in a way that was forward thinking. Rather than rehashing the bands that came before them, they took their ideas and morphed them into something that was wholly their own. That is, they were able to write short fast songs that still feel like songs rather than simply bursts of aggression. Their song writing skills, specifically on The Inalienable Dreamless, are unparalleled in grindcore. While the songs are still ferocious in their own right they contain more interesting tonal characteristics than the simpler fast power chords and blast beats of their contemporaries.”
But for Discordance Axis, after years of being marginalized, seeing other bands adapt their sonic template is a bizarre reversal.
“I have always found it surreal that DA has any kind of following today given how completely people were disinterested with us when we existed,” Chang said. “It seems like the music has influenced people in the form of bands, individuals or other artists who have nothing to do with music.”
Cloning is intrinsic to musical evolution. Nobody would be grinding now if it weren’t for shamelessly ripping off Siege, Napalm Death and Repulsion. Hell, Carcass has been cloned more times than a Mandalorian bounty hunter. Indeed, Discordance Axis’ first album, Ulterior, owed a significant and obvious debt to From Enslavement to Obliteration.
“In the case of clones or cover bands, I hope those people are getting their sea legs and working to eclipse what we did. I know when we started we were very influenced by the Scum, SOB-split era of Napalm Death, SOB, Assuck and Anal Cunt, but we found our own voice in time,” Chang said.

Good Reads: Deep Thoughts

The book: The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace


David Foster Wallace published his first novel at an age when most of us are still mastering the art of the keg stand. And if that were enough to make him an overachiever, Mr. Smarty Pants’ debut, The Broom of the System is actually a super meta in-joke about philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thoughts on the way language mediates our perception of reality. But don’t let that deter you. If it makes you feel less inadequate, it’s obvious Wallace was young and trying just a little too hard and owed a too obvious debt to Thomas Pynchon. The Broom of the System is the convoluted tale of awkward, overly cerebral Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman (a thinly veiled, gender-bent version of the author) and her search for her missing philosopher great-grandmother that careens through fat men determined to eat the world, ominous shadows and a smart mouthed cockatiel in a twisty, hilarious romp through mid-America in the late ‘80s. It’s also an easier entry into Wallace’s oeuvre than the intimidating 1,000 page (+100 more pages of footnotes, some of which have their own footnotes!)  virtuosity of Infinite Jest, which is well worth reading too.

A representative passage:
There were two reliable ways to identify the Bombardini Building, which was where the firm of Frequent and Vigorous made its home. A look from the south at Erieview Tower, high and rectangular not far from the Terminal section of Cleveland’s downtown, reveals that the sun, always at either a right or a left tangent to the placement of the Tower, casts a huge, dark shadow of the Building over the surrounding area—a deep, severely angled shadow that joins the bottom of the Tower in black union but then bends precipitously off to the side, as if the Erieview Plaza section of Cleveland were a still pool of water, into which the Tower had been dipped, the shadow its refracted submergence. In the morning, when the shadow casts from east to west, the Bombardini Building stands sliced by light, white and black, on the Tower’s northern side. As the day swells and the shadow compacts and moves ponderously in and east, and as clouds begin to complicate the shapes of darknesses, the Bombardini Building is slowly eaten by black, the steady suck of the dark broken only by epileptic flashes of light caused by clouds with pollutant bases bending rays of sun as the Bombardini Building flirts ever more seriously with the border of the shadow. By mid-afternoon the Bombardini Building is in complete darkness, the windows glow yellow, cars go by with headlights. The Bombardini Building, then, is easy to find, occurring nowhere other than on the perimeter of the sweeping scythe of the Midwest’s very most spectacular shadow.

The album: Dogma by Asterisk*


Asterisk* is what happens when a philosophy graduate student like Wallace tosses over writing and gets really into Discordance Axis. The Swedish trio followed the Jersey Boys’ lead in elevating the intellectual and emotional aspects of grindcore on their retrospective master's dissertation Dogma. Their weapon of choice was grind that flirted with linguistics, philosophy, literature and pop culture in a way that hadn’t been seen before and rarely rivaled since. While the music may have nodded back to Discordance Axis, Asterisk* established a lyrical identity that was wholly their own.

A representative song: “Phrase Structure Tree”



You'll probably need a phrase structure tree just to keep up with a few of Wallace's more virtuoso sentences.

Ever Increasing Circles

I have a limited musical vocabulary. So much for all those piano lessons when I was 10, mom. But Mourning the Unknown features one the best of what I call “circular” riffs during the swirling maelstrom that is “I Dare.” It’s a vaguely black metal-ish round of tail-biting that circles like a shark-toothed Ouroboros before closing in for the kill. Like piercing, ringing guitar tones, it’s one of those songwriting tricks for which I’m absolutely a sucker. Like the aforementioned Sayyadina, Luddite Clone also uncork a circuitous ripper on “Oratory of the Jigsaw” while Swedish Discordance Axis disciples Asterisk* fast forward their way through the same slight of hand. Even Napalm Death and ASRA, neither exactly known for their commitment to flowery songwriting, have been known to toss out chunkier versions of the same trick.
Here’s a few of my favorites. Enjoy.

Asterisk* – “Dromology”
Cyness – “Lonely Planet”
ASRA – “Payload”
Napalm Death – “Next on the List”
Wojczech – “Superparadigma”
Rotten Sound – “Blind”
Sayyadina – “I Dare”
Luddite Clone – “Oratory of the Jigsaw”
Who’s My Saviour – “You March”

Blast(beat) From the Past: Asterisk* (How Swede It Is Part 4)

Asterisk*
Dogma
Three One G
We hold these truths to be self evident: all men are created equal but Discordance Axis has none.
And while The Inalienable Dreamless is an unfuckwithable milestone for grind (see top right) and should be a cultural touchstone anthropologists will reference in a more enlightened age, surprisingly, Discordance Axis are not one of those bands that led to wholesale cloning (though that may finally be changing).
That has probably contributed to the band’s singular stature, and Umea’s Asterisk* were certainly one of the first to nick Chang-san’s signature sound. These three Swedes were one of the few bands to take Discordance Axis’ shtickfor a spin through a graduate philosophy course, giving it a thoroughly postmodern sheen.
Rather than manga and sci fi novels, Asterisk* roared their sleek, slithering grind straight through the world’s weightiest questions, addressing animal rights, Shakespeare, religion and philosophy with a thoughtfulness that belied the band’s brevity.
Dogma, the band’s discography, brings the kind of tunes that would have seared themselves into Johnny Mneumonic’s permanent recollection. Scope the way “An Angel Collapsing’s” insectile skitter hearkens back to Rob Marton’s “Ruin Trajectory” string scrapes. Asterisk* also show they have no fear of blithely traversing grind’s well posted boundaries to dabble in Euro techno dance music on the brief but accurately titled “The Anomly.”
While their DA debt is also self evident, Asterisk* were the plucky clone that could, taking Jersey’s finest export’s signature sound and bending it to their own profound purposes; not so much wholesale copyright infringement as sincere homage.