Grind in Rewind 2013

Punctuality has never been my strong point, but I thought I’d get ahead of the curve this year and put out my year end list a bit early. Yay me.
This year, in particular, I have to thank all the cool bands and labels who were generous enough to share their music with me. Since the advent of the Lil Grinder, my discretionary music buying budget has been slashed to zero. So more than ever I’m reliant upon the kindness of strangers. And this year strangers had some pretty damn good taste. Let’s get down to it.

10. Dead Church/Suffering Mind
Split
7 Degrees
Don’t get the wrong idea. The only thing that puts this split down at number 10 is the fact that it’s just one song from each band. But sweet holy fucking Shiva on a shingle, those two songs are absolute humdingers. Suffering Mind have been operating at an extremely high level for quite a few years now, but “War Street/Wall Street” may be the most perfect distillation of the Polish band’s polish and promise that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a perfect little grind tune. Flipside, Dead Church match Suffering Mind’s intensity, chewing through “I Want Nothing” like Al Pacino with an electric scenery gnawing machine powered by cocaine and incinerated copies of Godfather Part 3. Normally, one song from a band is not worth the wax it occupies, but this split is definitely the exception.

9. Detroit
Reality Denied
Grindcore Karaoke
Detroit have been on a roll recently and Reality Denied just keeps that trend trucking like one of the diesel huffing monstrosities churned out by their namesake city. The album may start with “False” but Detroit remains true: loose and spastic and flailing with the abandon of youth. Every song is hewed from the molds established by Napalm Death and Capitalist Casualties, but they’re played with an aplomb that keep that from being merely derivative. There’s a sincerity of focus that elevates them beyond their humble ambitions.

8. Rotten Sound
Species at War
Relapse
Just when I’d accepted that Rotten Sound’s Murderworks/Exit days were behind them and they were in more of a fast crust punk mold, the Finns start banging out awesome EPs that capture the vibe of their earliest material. Species at War was another great short effort, a snarling little bugbear of bad attitude and unrelenting pessimism. Rotten Sound sound ripped to the gills on humanity’s self-inflicted bullshit and they’re ready to push the button to end it all. The apocalypse has never sounded so upbeat.

7. Sacridose
Anxiety Tremors
Financial Ruin/Bandcamp
Cellgraft offshoot Sacridose sound like the former crossed up with a soupcon of Cloud Rat’s fast hardcore rampage. It’s a winning combination. Plus they cover Rudimentary Peni. Always a bonus. That aside, their original material is a shattered glass tornado of whirling aggression and vertiginous blasting twists. It’s lean and it’s mean and it’s got a hardcore soul that keeps it from being too easily tagged as Cellgraft resurgent.

6. Slavestate 641A
Masochist
Grindcore Karaoke/Name Like His Master
This is not grind in the musical sense. It’s grind in the tectonic sense. It’s the slow motion smashing of giant plates of earth, buckling and crumbling under the pressure of uncompromising repetition. Born from Robocop, who helped lead the power violence resurgence, Slavestate 641A pull much the same trick on classic Godflesh and Swans, reinvigorating heavy as fuck slow motion misery that crawls along at a stumble step. It’s death by degrees and it’s demanding but the payoff is emotionally satisfying and enervating. It take it that’s how masochism is supposed to work.

5. Gowl
Buzzbox
Self Released
Gowl raged right out of nowhere (i.e. Connecticut) in 2013, leaving a smoldering nuclear crater of irradiated awesomeness in their too brief wake. The onomatopoeitic Buzzbox lives up to its name with a snarling tiptoe through Backslider’s garden, which is planted high with amp buzz and clanking snare. It’s a glorious little cacophony that doesn’t offer too much in the way of originality, but it’s delivered with bravado and abandon. That’s really all I ask.

4. Wake
False
7 Degrees/Handshake Inc.
Wake have been churning out amazing records with such regularity now that it’s almost easy to take them for granted. False is another immaculate entry into their already enviable discography. Its chief success is corralling together another 11 songs that each have their own voice and personality and then having the confidence to let the songs breathe and stake out their own space. Wake haven’t stumbled yet so False makes me truly eager to hear what the Canadians churn out next.

3. Sick/Tired
King of Dirt
Cowabunga
King of Dirt worships at the altar pure noise. Noisecore has a special place in my heart and Sick/Tired pluck at each and every string. It’s a chaotic blast of everything that makes grind great. Even the ending on the slow noise song cliché takes on a new vitality at their twisted behest. It’s noisy, angular and strikes with a concussive force. And I keep coming back for more. This is definitely one of my most listened albums in 2013 and it’s still a part of my regular musical rotation. Their follow up EP is just as badass.

2. Who’s My Savior
Wall of Sickness
7 Degrees
Look, I’ve been raving about Who’s My Saviour for years now. I think Glasgow Smile is a certified fucking classic. So I don’t know how much more I need to say to them. Why aren’t you listening to this shit right this fucking minute? Because Wall of Sickness is another brilliant slice of twisted grind from the German trio, who refuse to be bound by grindcore convention but never leave their roots too far behind. Wall of Sickness is an amazing slow build EP that boasts some of Who’s My Saviour’s catchiest songs and these guys excel at writing a memorable grind hook.

1. Cloud Rat

Moksha

IFB/Halo of Flies/React With Protest/7 Degrees
I called this one back in January. I stand by it 11 months later. Simply put, there has not been another album that comes close to Moksha’s transformative emotional experience this year. Cloud Rat sneak in His Hero is Gone melody and a Neil Young cover as part of the most unabashedly emotional and riveting album in recent memory. Moksha is harrowing in its honesty and plaintive in its frustrated sincerity. No matter how bleak life gets, Cloud Rat still strive for the light of hope. Madison absolutely brought it this album, screaming her soul out to make Moksha the standout musical experience that it is.

Good Reads: The Devils You Know

The book: Devils (aka The Possessed) by Fyodor Dostoevsky
 

I continually flip flop between Devils and The Brothers Karamazov as my favorite book of all time. I usually read both about once every six months just on general principle. Devils, one of Dostoevsky’s lesser known novels, is the tale of would be communist revolutionaries fomenting chaos in a rural Russian enclave. It’s a set up that allows Fyodor Mikhailovich to dwell on the corrupt soul of man through the characters of the venal, manipulative Peter Stepanovich, the decadent Nikolai Stavrogin and the melancholy suicide Kirillov. It’s a story of vice, murder, suicide and social decay as Dostoevsky chronicles a society that rots from the inside out but still begs for something noble and righteous to cling to. If they cannot differentiate between the sublime and the foul, that's only one more cause for weeping. While Dostoevsky’s prescription, embracing a reactionary form of Orthodox Christianity, may not resonate with too many grindheads, his sorrow at the sheer waste of it all is palpable.

A representative passage:

“Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Everything is now pain and fear. Man loves life now because he loves fear and pain. That’s how it’s been. Life is given in return for pain and fear now, and that’s the whole deception. But man is still not really man. There will come a new man, happy and proud. He who doesn’t care whether he lives or dies – he’ll be the new man. He who conquers pain and fear – will become God. And then the old God will no longer exist. […] God is the pain of the fear of death. He who conquers pain and fear – will become God. Then a new life will dawn; there’ll be a new man; everything will be new… History will be divided into two parts: from gorilla to the destruction of God and from the destruction of God to… […] … to the physical transformation of the earth and man. […] Everyone who wants absolute freedom will have to dare to kill himself. Everyone who dares to kill himself will have discovered the secret of deception. There’s no freedom beyond that; that’s everything – there’s nothing more. He who dares kill himself is God.”

The album: Moksha by Cloud Rat



There’s a similar sorrow that undergirds Cloud Rat’s most recent album. It’s the soul sickness of the survivor who watches friends and family succumb to the kind of inner pain that drives them to reckless extremes (chemical, emotional, physical) to blunt the torment of their existence. But underneath it all, there’s a brooding sense of hope at war with the despair that plagues humanity. Short of death, lives can be changed and mistakes can be atoned, sins can be cleansed, peace can be found.

A representative song:  “Aroma”



Should have let me choose, shouldn’t have you? Rebellion leading to freedom. Burned alive. I smell you. I smell like you. I am awake and inside out. “Awful punishment awaits bad people…” Jenny taught me. And it will be heroic to try and stop me. It’s still happening and it’s not changing. So you’re lying lying lying. My voice is in your throat. And it all must burn burn burn.

Their Bodies, The Performance Machine: Cloud Rat Unleash an Ode to Daunting Daughters

I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ocose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam uti chelidon--O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Whey then Ile fit you. Heironymo's mad engine.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih

T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land
1922

According to a variety of Eastern religions, our karma chains us to a nearly endless cycle of rebirth and suffering. But occasionally the blessed few achieve enlightenment, transcend their limitations and break that cycle through a process of liberation called moksha.
Cloud Rat's Moksha is built on a lifetime of bad luck, poor timing and worse decisions. The Michigan trio's latest, breakout record is a baker's dozen songs about addiction, loss and hard times, but it's so much more than a simple recital of misery. No matter how gray the skies get in Cloud Rat's world, there's an uplifting glimmer of hope that creeps through when you're not prepared.
The result is the clear frontrunner for album of the year and it's only January.
"Madison initially had the idea of using Moksha as an album title, and we just kind of ran with it because it can represent so many things that our lyrics address," guitarist Rorik said. "Liberation in a literal sense, i.e. animal liberation, Earth liberation, humyn liberation, feminism, sexual/gender liberation, etc. This existence that we all inhabit is so full of suffering and despair, and has always been that way, whether by nature’s hand or man. We all were brought in to this world against our will, and death is absolutely the only way out. There is a song in particular on this record that touches on that whole idea, 'Infinity Chasm.' I have a nine year old daughter, and the lyrics to the song are written like a note to her. First reminiscing about all of our time spent together, then apologizing for subjecting her to this world with all of its suffering as well as joy and beauty, and then showing the reality that eventually I will be gone and she will be gone, and there is nothing we can do about it."

The Needle...

For a band that went from daydreaming about starting a band to recording their first album in a scant six weeks, Moksha, released by IFB Records and Halo Of Flies Records in the United States and by React With Protest Records and 7 Degree Records in Europe, is a breakout moment that finds Cloud Rat expanding their sonic palette beyond simple hardcore without ever sacrificing the aggression that nurtured them. Instead, they build on their natural strengths with an extra layer of stumble-toed gloom. The mumbled misery of "Infinity Chasm" and a devastating take on Neil Young's junkie lament "The Needle and the Damage Done" may anchor Cloud Rat to their karmic penance, but salvation is in within the trio's sight.
Moksha is centered around vocalist Madison's emotional purgative, and she spits and screams her way through a lifetime's frustrations. No woman has so utterly dominated a grind album like this since Alyssa Murray stole the mic with Disrupt. Madison wails and eviscerates your heart like a hardcore Billie Holiday. Rorik and drummer Adrian smartly give her the foundation she needs to lay on the line one of the most bare and provocative vocal performances you'll ever hear. Where too many grind bands hide behind layers of metaphor or safe political abstraction, Cloud Rat is deeply personal and emotionally jagged.
"I always feel really self-conscious about my vocals in the studio," Madison said. "I didn’t really prepare much, just brought my lyrics and screamed them at Rorik because he stresses me out in the studio. Kevin Kitchel makes things really comfortable for us though, so that helps. A lot of my lyrics are very personal, so that brings out some demons as well."
Madison's lyrics are so personal she's occasionally shied away from setting them to tape, but her bandmates urged her to share her experiences.
"There have been numerous times when recording over the past three years that she has been reluctant to put some of this stuff out there, this record included," Rorik said. "She usually does though, and I commend her for it. We all come from broken homes, abusive upbringings, past drug problems, etc. There are a lot of other people out there who have dealt with the same things and worse, so that’s why I think it’s good that she puts that out there, so others can relate."
Kitchel (of The Oily Menace fame) has recorded all of Cloud Rat's music, and he said the band has become increasingly comfortable in his home studio. That allows the band to dig deep and focus on their performances, he said.
"My studio isn't a studio; it's just my dining room and a live-room the size of a mini-van down in the basement. So when people come to record, it's also hanging out with my cats, making food with stuff from the garden, and probably a lot of drinking because I have a kegerator that is usually full of homebrew or local stuff," Kitchel said. "We were fast and firm friends! In the years since the first recording session we have got to be much closer, and Madison even lived here for a while. She even pushed the bass player for The Oily Menace (who also lived here) through a window while dancing, so like I said, firm friends!  It's that level of comfort that lets bands be real. There were tour deadlines for each and every recording, but this time the guitars and drums were done months before the vocals. It's pretty amazing to me that they had so many great songs written for all these releases. The Moksha vocal and mixing sessions were I think over one weekend just before they left for the tour with thedowngoing, right down to the wire."

...and the Damage Done

Ecologically minded and unabashedly feminist, Cloud Rat also continue to stripmine the matriarchs of antiquity for metaphors to encapsulate their songs' themes, combining the band's penchant for feminism, paganism, and Eastern spirituality into a single package.
"Moksha does again borrow a bit from paganism/mythology, significantly in the tracks 'Olympia,' 'Vigil,' and 'Daunting Daughters,'" Rorik said. "We are all somewhat spiritually inclined. I think that mythology, especially Eurasian mythology/spirituality, is fascinating, and using it for imagery and lyrical allegories and metaphors makes things a lot more interesting than just lyrics like 'The world is fucked, government sucks, burn it down,' etc. I mean, I am way into a lot of bands that do that kind of thing, but we just choose not to."
While Cloud Rat have not abandoned the grind that has built their buzz the last few years, Moksha is largely defined by their extra-genre excursions, centered around their take on Neil Youngr. Drummer Adrian was the impetus behind the band's first recorded cover.
"It was Adrian’s idea to cover Neil Young. We always talk about doing covers but never do it. He was set on it, so one day I sat down with it and started figuring out how we could go about it," Rorik said. "I decided that we should basically just do it the way Neil did it, only full band/distorted, a bit slower and gloomier, with all three of us singing. As I mentioned earlier, drugs have been a big part of our lives since we were young. I’ve done a lot of crazy shit and started when I was 11 years old. The three of us have similar stories. Heroin ripped our community apart once, where about half of the punks in Mount Pleasant were into it. We lost some friends, some dead, others in prison, lives destroyed, etc. That’s why we did this song, because we know what it’s like, and Neil said it best: 'I’ve seen the needle and the damage done / a little part of it in everyone / but every junkie’s like a setting sun.'"
Adrian also provided the plaintive piano outro that delivers the album's final emotional uplift. More than a throwaway track at the end of a record, Moksha's title track punctuates the psychological journey. It's a spiritual culmination of Moksha's overriding themes.
"Originally 'Infinity Chasm' was going to be called 'Moksha,' but then Adrian brought this to the table a few days before we were going to finish vocals and mixing," Rorik said. "We all thought it was perfect for the record, so we kept it. He has a project with our friend Tom called Found Letters that is ambient/noise stuff, and they did this track one night fall 2012 while really drunk and depressed, at a barn in the middle of nowhere."
It's that kind of inspiration and confidence that make Moksha the must hear album of the year. It's a record guaranteed to place Clout Rat near the top of many best of 2013 lists.
Shantih shantih shantih.

Minute Men

If you haven't availed yourself already, Blastbeat Mailmurder Records (aka Panos Agoros of Dephosphorus fame) is up with the first volume of the Monomaniac 7-inch series. The concept is Panos rounded up a handful of kickass bands and gave them one minute each to do what thou wilt. Volume one features forehead crushing contributions from 10 bangers including Cloud Rat, Sete Star Sept, Detroit, Body Hammer, Head Cleaner and three(!!!)  contributions from Australian dervishes thedowngoing in 60 seconds or less.
Panos has done a fabulous job putting this package together and I'm already drooling at the thought of volume two. I played a small role hooking Panos up with a few of the participants, so I won't be giving it a full review (but seriously, it kicks all kinds of ass). However, I just wanted to shove this one under your noses  if you haven't checked it out already. The 7-inch is gorgeously done, but you can also check it out as a pay-what-you-want download at Blastbeat Mailmurder's Bandcamp page. Do yourself a favor and give this one a listen.

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

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.]

You Grind…But Why?: Cloud Rat

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."

G&P Review: Cloud Rat

Cloud Rat
Cloud Rat
IFB Records
Cloud Rat’s Infest-ed hardcore shenanigans are like finding a sweet vintage muscle car – say, that beautiful white 1970 Dodge Challenger from Vanishing Point – lurking in a used car lot for a steal of a price (free in this case). Sure, it may not be the newest or most fashionable whip on the block, but there are a lot of good miles left under the girl’s hood.
So if I could offer myself up as a humble Super Soul to Cloud Rat’s Kowalski (to continue a metaphor), let me kindly point your attention in their direction as they thrash about and yowl for your pleasure. This is a band that gets by on a driving dynamo core of youthful energy over 11 tracks of blastbeats (all 38 seconds of “Canine”) and then, just for a change of pace, near blastbeats (the moody, mercurial – and of course, lengthy – closer “Complex to Break.”).
The songs all follow pretty familiar musical patterns, but they’re rescued by an authenticity of vision and commitment. “Yama” jangles through clean art rock chords and dramatic Celtic Frost-brand female spoken word while “Mouse Trap” dials back just enough to really shove the vocals to the fore. With lyrical content dealing with loneliness, longing and abandonment, Cloud Rat are a band that’s confident enough that their songs may have something worth listening to that they’re not afraid to shove the vocals in your face. “There’s nothing wrong with me,” the singer wails on “Sinkhole.” That’s an understatement. You can download an unmastered version of the album at the band’s website (linked above), and it’s certainly worth checking out.

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