The Namesake Series: “Cleptocracy”

I’ve been re-reading Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s brilliant and prescient DMZ comics lately. It makes me think a lot about the conditions that could lead to a second American civil war. A war-weary public feel like they’re about to be railroaded into yet another military intervention in the Middle East without any clear understanding of the goal or strategic necessity. Whackaloons are talking about secession because they lost a democratic election. Congress is so broke that it can’t even come together to accomplish the most basic requirements of governing. There’s something in the air that Brian Wood could see coming nearly a decade ago. People left, right and center have this vague, undefined feeling that forces just out of sight and beyond their control have taken over the levers of power, a quiet coup by the kleptocracy.
Astute grinders sensed it coming as well. Texas libertarians Kill the Client dedicated a whole album to the concept way back in 2008.



Freedom-loving Ron Paul aficionado Champ Morgan launches a revolutionary diatribe, exhorting people to rise up against the plutocrats who have used their wealth and influence to tilt the economic playing field against Joe Sixpack who’s just trying to cover a mortgage and keep the kids in school. It’s the frustrated cry of the bewildered workaday office drone who never got a fair shake. Kill the Client aren’t calling for a huge societal upheaval. They just want the rules to be square for everyone.



Hailing from the opposite end of the political spectrum, Jan Frederickx and crew appropriated the language of Karl Marx when they called out the kleptocrats on Agathocles’ 2010 effort This is Not a Threat, It’s a Promise. Frederickx exhorts “Comrades of all nations [to] kick back capitalist domination.”
Two bands with almost diametrically opposed political ideologies keyed in on the same sense of frustration with the way the modern economy is unforgivably gamed to the benefit of the already rich. Same diagnosis but different prescriptions. However, it gives you the sense that maybe something is brewing among the disaffected masses of wage slaves who lack the clout to force their elected representatives to act in their constituents’ interest. So maybe next time somebody warns you about a redneck uprising in Helena, Montana, you better pay attention.

G&P Review: Kill the Client (The Class of Oct. 28)

Kill the Client
Cleptocracy
Willowtip
Anybody with the privilege of being Kill the Client mouthpiece Morgan’s MySpace friend will tell you that he’s a prodigious sender of bulletins and he took it particularly hard when (small L) libertarian upstart Ron Paul failed to conquer the Republican primary, ignite a guns and torches in the streets uprising or generally alter American existence in any kind of meaningful or noticeable way.
With Paul’s blimp in drydock and the rEVOLution currently on hold, Morgan and his co-conspirators channeled their election year frustration into a second vicious full length chapter in their elite grind journal. If you’re looking for the down tempo respites that broke up Escalation of Hostility, Cleptocracy will bodycheck you like Scott Stevens catching a forward crossing center ice with his head down. Produced by bassist James Delgado, Cleptocracy is a circular saw assault on the senses that offers little quarter from the relentless blastbeat mugging and even relatively tame tunes “Downfall” and “Evidence of Injustice” stomp along at mosh pit speeds.
The explosive “Christian Pipebomb” is practically onomatopoetic, a concussive detonation that sends out indiscriminate waves of shrapnel rending flesh and bone. “False Flag Attack,” debuted on the This Comp Kills Fascists disc, posits 9/11 was an inside government job to accrue more power to the Bush administration (which is not really surprising, Morgan straight faced dropped references to Illuminati conspiracies to rule with world in conversations with me) while “The Lies” condenses Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great into a minute long high speed diatribe.
In-demand drummer Bryan Fajardo must be making his bid to be the next Dave Witte cuz in addition to back stopping Kill the Client, the guy has also anchored GridLink this year and just joined Phobia fulltime as well. It only takes a few measures into lead off song “Divide and Conquer” to see that Fajardo is worth whatever these bands are paying him.
With that kind of anchor propelling their ferocious second album, Kill the Client are staking their claim as one of grind’s leading voices, and I, for one, am not going to dispute that.