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.

Packaged Rebellion: When Presentation Enhances the Album Experience

Insert tired fucking cliché about books and covers [HERE]. Well worn bromides of questionable veracity aside, a good cover and an innovative package in the hands of a clever designer can actually enhance the album experience. While album art and packaging are meant to convey quickly what a record’s about (“Hey, this has Ed Repka zombies on the cover; it must be the new Taylor Swift album,” said nobody ever), the designs can actually take music and elevate it by providing another entryway into the art. A good visual and a design that invites close study and an extra minute of thought can even elevate albums that were otherwise forgettable failures.
Here are five albums that stepped up the game on the visual side. 

Discordance Axis
The Inalienable Dreamless 
Hydra Head
2000
The Inalienable Dreamless looks like no other album before or since. Jon Chang’s meticulous design ensured that Discordance Axis’ final album would stand out from all of their peers and competitors (even if it did get grindcore’s defining moment mistakenly exiled to the DVD section of many retailers). Most obviously, The Inalienable Dreamless came packaged in a DVD case, which gave a wider, more cinematic aspect ratio to the wrap around horizon and seascape the band chose for the art. If most album art was in a TV aspect, Discordance Axis had jumped to wide screen. The colors and imagery gave no hint to The Inalienable Dreamless’ content and the illegible logo, tiny script for the album title and lack of even song titles and a bar code on the packaging ensured the album would be an enticing mystery for those brave enough to peek inside. And inside, fans would find a larger than usual booklet that was laid out to look like a journal, just one more personal touch that made The Inalienable Dreamless the endlessly fascinating musical landmark it remains today.

Coldworker
The Contaminated Void
Relapse
2006
Coldworker’s music vacillates between inoffensively forgettable to insultingly unlistenable. But the one thing Anders Jakobsson’s post-Nasum project got perfect was the art for debut album The Contaminated Void.  Relapse’s resident visual maestro Orion Landau crafted a clever booklet for the album that includes clear cellophane overlays that alter the art a page at the time, concealing and revealing the Breugellian horror behind, framing and then exposing the hellish slasher film revelry. Coldworker never deviated much from the well worn themes of death, decay, betrayal and misery and even then weren’t album to elevate their material beyond the legions of similarly minded metallers, but the booklet art is enough to keep you coming back periodically to experience The Contaminated Void against the backdrop of such a striking package. Relapse has to be applauded for cracking open its wallet for such a visually inventive presentation. It’s just a shame it wasn’t in service of a better album.

Creation is Crucifixion
Child as Audience
Hactivist Media
2001
Child as Audience is many things: Creation is Crucifixion’s best sounding effort, a didactic lesson in critical theory by a droning, monotone lecturer and a whole Anarchist’s Cookbook full of practical cultural and technological subversion suggestions. Against all of that, the three songs, which were some of Creation is Crucifixion’s best, can understandably get lost. At the center of the unassuming brown cardboard box, a nod back to the brown paper bags used to sell dirty magazines in the bad old days, is an inch think multilingual book that lays out the Creation is Crucifixion manifesto on education, liberty and authoritarianism. Child as Audience is intent on subverting the methods used to indoctrinate children, instead turning them into opportunities to learn the principles of radical anarchism. Creation is Crucifixion provide one means for subverting indoctrination by detailing instructions for reverse engineering old Nintendo Gameboy cartridges to create games that teach children the joys of of their own sexual development while reinforcing the message that authority figures can never be trusted. That’s a hell of a lot to cram into a package that contains less than 15 minutes of music.

Graf Orlock
Doombox
Vitriol Records
2011
Graf Orlock’s creative packaging is so legendary it probably deserves a post of its own from the face-hugger CD-holder of Destination Time Tomorrow to the multiple foldout fronts of Destination Time Today. The attention to detail they put into their offerings is meticulous and a large part of the band’s charm. But the cinephile grinders absolutely outdid themselves with the stunning Doombox. The 2011 release not only included the band’s entire discography to date, but the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle folded out into a giant ass boombox to hold your precious filmcore records. The whole concept is deliberately over the top but it also perfectly encapsulates Graf Orlock’s passion for film and their go for broke approach to music and presentation. It’s that kind of time and budget killing vision that lets you know Graf Orlock view their music as something more serious than a revenue stream.

Pig Destroyer
Book Burner
Relapse
2012
However disappointing Book Burner might have been musically, the packaging, especially for those of us who shelled out for the two CD digipack, does admirably reflect Pig Destroyer’s lyrical themes and ambitions. The book-bound digipack, which includes J.R. Hayes’ short story “The Atheist,” feels like a tome in your hands. It's like a samizdat missive from the dystopian world of Hayes’ imagination and that does help reinforce the themes Pig Destroyer were trying to build on Book Burner. Now none of that redeems flaccid music, a stale concept and a trite, poorly written short story, but it does show some forethought and an eye toward worldbuilding. The term concept album gets tossed out too casually for every wanking prog band that slaps together a handful tunes about calculus, but Book Burner at least tried to create a complete packing from the art to the presentation to the music that established multiple entry points into their blighted landscape. It was ultimately a failure, but it was a failure that took a chance.

Grindcore Bracketology 3: The King of the World

Anybody else barely sleep last night, giddy with anticipation? It's like Christmas and the Oscars and the NHL trading deadline all rolled into one! It's the most important day of the grindcore calendar. Right? ... crickets.
Ok. Moving on.
We're about to crown the best grindcore record in history with two of the genre defining records vying for the honor. But first, let's take a quick trip back to see how the standings broke down so far.

32. Unseen Terror-Human Error 
31.Cellgraft-External Habitation (tie)
31. Sakatat-Bir Devrin Sonu (tie)
31. S.O.B.-Gate of Doom (tie)
28. Liberteer-Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees
27. Enemy Soil-Casualties of Progress (tie)
27. Mortalized-Absolute Mortality 2 (tie)
25. Extreme Noise Terror-A Holocaust in Your Head (tie)
25. S.O.B.-Don't Be Swindle (tie)
23. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-PCP Torpedo
22. Nasum-Helvete (tie)
22. Carcass-Reek of Putrefaction (tie)
20. Siege-Drop Dead (tie)
20. Agoraphobic Nosebleed-Altered States of America (tie)
20. Suffering Mind-Suffering Mind (tie)
17. Napalm Death-From Enslavement to Obliteration
16. Dephosphorus-Night Sky Transform
15. Kill the Client-Cleptocracy
14. GridLink-Amber Gray
13. Disrupt-Unrest
12. Brutal Truth-Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses (tie)
12. Wormrot-Abuse (tie)
10. Assuck-Misery Index
9. Brutal Truth-Need to Control
8. 324- Boutoku no Taiyo
7. Pig Destroyer-Prowler in the Yard
6. Napalm Death-Scum
5. Terrorizer-World Downfall
4. Insect Warfare-World Extermination
3. Assuck-Anticapital

You could put together a pretty damn good grind collection using that as a template.
So with that trip down memory lane behind us, let's get down to business. It call came down to two albums, Repulsion's genre-defining (literally!) Horrified and Discordance Axis' new millennium game changer The Inalienable Dreamless. Would you go with tradition and nod back to the festering zombie that started it all or would you crown an anime-core classic as the greatest grind that ever ground?
C'mon. With my readership? We all know where this is going. The Inalienable Dreamless swept to a commanding 22-11 win, doubling up on Horrified to take the title as the single greatest grind album ever as chosen by you, my intelligent, charismatic, wise, dexterous, strong and ... ummm.... constitutional readers (D&D Second Edition 4 Lyfe, bitches!). I hope you can live with your choice.
Thank you everyone for participating. Until next year.

Grindcore Bracketology 3: The Whole Enchilada

Mmmmm...tastes like burning.

So this is what three months of planning and voting and debating have led up to. Two albums enter. One albums leaves. Thunderdome. You've cast your votes, you've left me with innumerable ties to break, but no more. This is it. This is for all the grindcore marbles. This week we decide the greatest grind album of all time by that most scientific of methods: the anonymous internet poll of self-selected readers of one obscure blog. I don't see how anyone will ever be able to dispute the validity of your choice. Because if there's one thing the internet is known for it, it's amicably reaching a decision after rational debate.

Here's how the penultimate week's matchups went down.

THE GEEZERS
Assuck started off strong, but we're talking about Horrified here. Repulsion are one of the foundational bands. They may have been milking one album for 30 years, but that's a pretty damn good one. Horrified advances by a vote of 19-17.

THE UPSTARTS
I wouldn't have faulted you for voting for Insect Warfare in this one (and for a while there it looked like an upset was in the offing), but The Inalienable Dreamless kept its perch at the top of the heap by 21-16.

So that brings us to the final battle in our little farce. The best of the oldies up against the greatest album the new generation has produced to date. As always, voting is open until Sunday either here or at the Facebook page.
I give you your final battle:

Repulsion-Horrified v. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless

Grindcore Bracketology: Round Four

Ok. Now I know you guys are just fucking with me. Are you guys getting together somewhere and conspiring to deadlock your votes? I blog my fingers to the bones for you ingrates and this is how you thank me? Are you trying to make me prematurely gray(er)? Three weeks in a row with a tie. Same category too. Once again, I must employ the wisdom of Solomon. Or flip a coin. Whatever.
Here's how it all went down in round three.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
Unlucky number 13 a piece for both Repulsion and Terrorizer. Clearly you people couldn't make up your mind and I'm torn on this one too. I probably enjoy Terrorizer more, but cmon, none of us would be here without Horrified. So Repulsion wins by one rotting maggot in a coffin.

More Punk
Scum is probably the first grind record worthy of the term grindcore, but that apparently only takes it so far in your affection. Assuck's Anticapital snuck past Napalm Death by 14-12.

THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
This is the one I thought would probably be the toughest call but despite a vocal contingent singing the praises of Prowler in the Yard, The Inalienable Fucking Dreamless cruised to a comfortable 16-11 victory.

More Farty
No contest here. Insect Warfare's World Extermination crushed poor 324 by a commanding 23-3.

So we are at the penultimate week of voting and it's time to decide the greatest of the Geezers and the freshest of the Upstarts. As always, voting is open until Sunday here or at the Facebook page. May the best band win.

THE GEEZERS
Repulsion-Horrified v. Assuck-Anticapital

THE UPSTARTS
Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless v. Insect Warfare-World Extermination

Grindcore Bracketology 3: Round Three

Not content with a deadlocked ending last week, you had to go and do it again. Good job, guys. This is why we can't have nice things. So for the second week in a row I was forced to employ my dictatorial powers to call the victor. Who did I just condemn to perdition? Read on.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
Once again the more metal category gave you fits with Terrorizer's World Downfall and Brutal Truth's Need to Control knotted up at 10 a side. So by the power vested in me by the state of insanity, I'm advancing Terrorizer to the next round. Plus, I'm afraid Gamefaced would beat me up if they lost.

More Punk
Assuck (anti)capitalized on their opportunity to bump Brutal Truth out of the running, squeaking past Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses by 11-9.

THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
Dephosphorus put out a beast of a record with Night Sky Transform, but who are we kidding? It's up against Prowler in the Yard. Pig Destroyer took a decisive 18-2 win.

More Farty
In the battle of Asia experience triumphed over youthful energy as 324 snuck past Wormrot by 11-9.

So that brings us to the end of the initial rounds and the updated brackets are available for your viewing pleasure here. Now it's time to get serious. It's time to decide who's the most metal, who's the artiest, who's the fartiest. Who will triumph in each category? As always, you have until Sunday and you can vote here or at the Facebook page.

THE GEEZERS
 
The Most Metal
1. Repulsion-Horrified v. 3. Terrorizer-World Downfall

The Punkiest
1. Napalm Death-Scum v. 5. Assuck-Anticapital

THE UPSTARTS

The Artiest
1. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless v. 2. Pig Destroyer-Prowler in the Yard

The Fartiest
1. Insect Warfare-World Extermination v. 5. 324-Boutoku no Taiyo

Grindcore Bracketology 3: The Start of Round Two

Ok, we started with 32 classic albums from all of grindcore's eras and now we're down to the Sweet Sixteen. Round One is over and the bands have been reseeded. The matchups only get uglier from this point on. You guys did a great job because there's some absolutely fascinating pairings coming your way in the very near future. Who's going to rise to the top of the fray?

Meanwhile, here's how round one came crashing to an end.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
Brutal Truth left Carcass to Reek of Putrefaction because the New York grind freaks Need to Control everything around them, rising by a vote of 11-7.

More Punk
This one surprised the hell out of me. I had Siege picked as a contender to win it all but they dropped dead in the face of Assuck's anticapitalist sentiments, 11-8.

THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
Night Sky Transform is barely a year old, but Dephosphorus upset one of my favorite grind albums ever, Agoraphobic Nosebleed's transformative Altered States of America, by 10-8.

More Farty
Japan's crustcore deities 324 pulled it out in squeaker. Boutoku no Taiyo edged past Suffering Mind's eponymous effort by 9-8.

So with all of that in the bag, the matchups and been reseeded and here's how Round Two is going to play out. Check it all out here.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
1. Repulsion-Horrified v. 7. Assuck-Misery Index
3. Terrorizer-World Downfall v. 4. Brutal Truth-Need to Control

More Punk
1. Napalm Death-Scum v. 6. Disrupt-Unrest
2. Brutal Truth-Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses v. 5. Assuck-Anticapital


THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
1. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless v. 6. GridLink-Amber Gray (That's right you picked between Matsubara projects only to get stuck with Chang on Chang)
2. Pig Destroyer-Prowler in the Yard v. 4. Dephosphorus-Night Sky Transform

More Farty
1. Insect Warfare-World Extermination v. 6. Kill the Client-Cleptocracy
2. Wormrot-Abuse v. 324-Boutoku no Taiyo


So all of that is prologue to this week's matchups. Once again, you have until Sunday. Vote here or at the Facebook page. Have at it.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
1. Repulsion-Horrified v. 7. Assuck-Misery Index

More Punk
1. Napalm Death-Scum v. 6. Disrupt-Unrest

THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
1. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless v. 6. GridLink-Amber Gray

More Farty
1. Insect Warfare-World Extermination v. 6. Kill the Client-Cleptocracy

Grindcore Bracketology 3: The 1-8 Matchups

There must be something about news of a new Squash Bowels album that does it to me because I have the flu yet again. But I won't let a little thing like leaking from orifices I never knew existed stop me from kicking off this year's bracketology. You'll just have to forgive me if I keep it short and sweet.
Here are the 1-8 matchups. You have until Sunday to vote here or at the Facebook page. Have at it.

THE GEEZERS

More Metal
1. Repulsion-Horrified v. 8. Enemy Soil-Casualties of Progress


More Punk
1. Napalm Death-Scum v. 8. Extreme Noise Terror-A Holocaust in Your Head

THE UPSTARTS

More Arty
1. Discordance Axis-The Inalienable Dreamless v. 8. Liberteer-Better to Die on Your Feet Than Live on Your Knees

More Farty
1. Insect Warfare-World Extermination v. 8. Cellgraft-External Habitation

Compiling Autumn Part 8: Our Last Day

This pain worse than death
I just ran away
Lonely?
Yes lonely
But you can't always rise from the dead
“The End of Rebirth”

A Broken Tomorrow

    For all the accolades Discordance Axis enjoyed in Japan, the trio of drummer Dave Witte, vocalist Jon Chang and guitarist Rob Marton had never toured the country together. After The Inalienable Dreamless came out, the band began making preparations for the first Japanese tour of the integral lineup. However, as with the Jouhou tour, Marton was forced to drop out at the last minute as a result of his health.
    “After the recording we were prepping for another Japanese tour that didn’t pan out for me. That was the point where I said enough was enough,” Marton said. “I had to put my health first. I really wanted to do it, but I couldn’t.  I just felt I was going to impact my health too much and I stopped.”
    As before, Discordance Axis pressed Human Remains guitarist Steve Procopio into service as Marton’s last minute replacement. Though he capably stepped into the guitar role, Chang said Procopio created a different dynamic for the band, bringing in different shadings to the songs.
    “That was going to be a big thing because we had never done that as a band before,” Chang said of the tour. “[Marton] basically dropped out and we brought in Steve Procopio. … Steve was a great guitar player. He’s still a great guitar player. He’s got his own sound. It’s not the Rob Marton sound. It gave it all a different sound when we played it live.”
    Marton’s decision to quit as a result of his tinnitus signaled the end of Discordance Axis. Though he dropped off the tour, the trio reunited for one last recording session, banging out “Ikaruga” which would be released as part of the Our Last Day collection, comprised largely of bands covering Discordance Axis songs as well as the first new track from Chang’s new band, GridLink.
    “Everybody just went and did their own thing and just forgot about it,” Witte said. “Rob needed a break.”
    At the time Discordance Axis recorded The Inalienable Dreamless, Witte, who always has several projects going, was also playing in Major Burns, Burnt by the Sun and Black Army Jacket.
    “I was an idiot,” Witte said. “I always had multiple pans on the stove. I was restless. I had so many ideas I had to get them out of me.”

The End of Rebirth

    Discordance Axis  was effectively over when the band returned from the Japan tour, but they played what would be their final show in New York City on Mother’s Day in 2001. After grinding to full houses in Japan, where Discordance Axis had always found a receptive audience, playing to 50 people on a slate of seven bands was an anticlimactic denouement to the band’s career.
    “Honestly, I didn't even want to do the last U.S. show,” Chang said. “We had come off an amazing Japan tour that we were not going to top with a U.S. performance, but Dave wanted to do it and I was sick of arguing. In retrospect, I'm really glad we played for the five people who came (not including the other bands). That way we could lose at least some of the money we made on the Japan tour and still come out broke in the end.”
    Chang said that final show was “an unfortunate ending” for Discordance Axis.
    “It was over when Rob said he was done. I think Dave and I agreed that without Rob, we couldn't write any new songs that would be DA songs,” Chang said. “Throughout the years, with guys stepping into/out of roles in the band, it was only the chemistry and sound between the three of us that made DA what it was. There were a lot of talented people who came/went as second guitar, touring guitar or drums, but it never sounded right unless it was the three original members.”
    Witte agrees the band would never have been able to carry on without Marton in tow.
    “Rob’s the total unsung hero in that band,” he said “People like my drumming and my beats and go apeshit over Jon’s screaming, but Rob anchored that band. He made it what it was. He’s a great blues guitar player. He wasn’t a full on metal guitar player. He’s great at it. His down picking is unbelievable. His combination of elements made him who he was.”
    The Inalienable Dreamless’ reputation has only grown after the band’s demise and the two songs they recorded for Our Last Day brought a sharper, more knifelike tone to Marton’s guitar, adding a new dimension to Discordance Axis. Our Last Day also leaves fans—and the band—wondering what would have become of a fourth album, whether they would have been able to maintain or even exceed the bar they had set for themselves with The Inalienable Dreamless.
    Ultimately, recording two final songs rather than a full album of material was a relief for Witte.
    “It was fun going in there just to be able to focus on one song,” he said. “Let’s just bust this out. It was the same thing. Rob sent me the song and I added the drums.”
    Discordance Axis has halfheartedly discussed reuniting since The Inalienable Dreamless, but the conversations have never come to fruition. At this point the trio doubts a reunion would be feasible as they’ve moved on to other musical projects and new interests.
    “That’s our definitive moment for sure,” Witte said. “Could we get any better? We don’t know. Did we care? We don’t know. Then we did ‘Ikaruga’ and that song held its own.  We would have still strived to do what we wanted to do.”
   
See You Next Life, Thrash Cowboy

    Though it was essentially Marton’s decision to end the band, the guitarist has not remained idle in the 12 years since he wrote a grindcore masterpiece in The Inalienable Dreamless. He said he’s constantly tinkering with new music, perhaps a little more traditionally metal than what Discordance Axis fans may be accustomed to. One day, he said, he may pick up the phone and, like he did in 1999, dial Witte’s number to discuss a new batch of songs.
    “I’m always writing, and I have a bunch of material,” Marton said. “I’m always threatening to send Dave stuff. I have a whole range of music I’d like to unleash on him. Life always intervenes. I’m getting close.”

Compiling Autumn Part 7: The Third Children

Touch me oh please I want to know that it's real
And if it's not it's better just to pretend
“The Necropolitan”

Mind Seduction Aftermath

Discordance Axis’ members may rank The Inalienable Dreamless as a personal milestone in their various musical careers, but that is not what made that record a transformative grindcore landmark. In the decade since its release The Inalienable Dreamless has become a life-changing touchstone for a new wave of musicians who have internalized that album’s influence as they craft their own art. A misunderstood anomaly in their day, Discordance Axis are now considered grindcore pioneers who opened the doors to new modes of expression.
“More and more people talk about it as the years go by,” drummer Dave Witte said. “I think it really appeals to the musicians as well.”
Noisear guitarist Dorian Rainwater said The Inalienable Dreamless represented “pure adrenalized, unadulterated grind,” influencing his own band’s development.
“The Inalienable Dreamless is a landmark release and the pinnacle of their career,” he said. “It was at the height of their existence and a beautiful display of artistic audio violence.”
Noisear was one of the first American bands to overtly draw inspiration from Discordance Axis’ sleek, technical grindcore, as well as lifting influences from Witte’s former outfit Human Remains. In addition to contributing a cover of “Mimetic” to Discordance Axis' farewell collection Our Last Day, Noisear would also include six Discordance Axis covers on 2007 album Pyroclastic Annhiallation.
That appreciation flows both ways because vocalist Jon Chang would later poach Noisear drummer Bryan Fajardo for his post-Discordance Axis band GridLink.
“Bryan’s emphasis on single pedal blast beats and Dave Witte’s style has been a huge influence on his growth a drummer throughout the years,” Rainwater said. “He, Thomas [Romero, Noisear guitarist] and Angelo [Perea, ex-guitarist] were constantly learning a variety of DA songs and eventually the dissonant chord voicings, hyper blasting, unorthodox patterns bled into our music. For me, personally, DA has always been an influence as well. Chang’s high pitched screaming vocals, raging guttural violence and Rob Marton’s unique guitar playing has an effect on grind unlike many others in the genre who struggle to get this effect with little to no progress.”
Body Hammer's Ryan Page only sought out The Inalienable Dreamless after his 2009 album, Jigoku, was repeatedly compared to Discordance Axis for its fixation on Japanese horror films and its DVD packaging. While the similarities were coincidental, Page said he discovered The Inalienable Dreamless as a result.
"I was extremely impressed with the album, especially the purity of it," Page said. "I enjoyed that the music was all timbrally very similar, and yet carried very distinct songs. That's a something quite difficult to navigate, and even bands I really enjoy like Insect Warfare start to sound samey at album length. Jon Chang's lyrics have always impressed me. It's not particularly common in grindcore or in any other sort of music for abstract, personal lyrics to communicate with the clarity and emotional impact of his writing. Oftentimes lyrics are either solipsistic or they're these cliches that isn't really representative of anything."

Tokyo

Throughout Discordance Axis’s career Chang drew much of lyrical inspiration from Japanese entertainment and pop culture and the band always seemed to resonate there more than it did in the United States.
“Even if you count the Steve Procopio shows, we played more shows in Japan than we did in the U.S. in the history of the band,” Chang said. “We didn’t play a lot of shows in the U.S. at all because nobody would come. There were shows where literally two people were there. Nobody showed up.”
Chang’s interest in Japan was reciprocated by boisterous music fans who were the first to glom on to Discordance Axis’ unique musical and lyrical style. Japanese grinders were among the first to recognize and incorporate Discordance Axis influences into their own music as well.
“Discordance Axis had already been famous in Japan when I [found] their music,” Mortalized guitarist Takafumi Matsurbara said.
Though Mortalized’s technical, relentless sound was not directly influenced by Discordance Axis, Matsubara said he was naturally drawn to another band that was blasting and lacked a bass player.
“We have no bassist in our band, so I was interested in them,” he said. “And Dave is a one foot blast drummer, Rob likes Voivod, those are similar to us. Those are the reasons why I was interested in them.”
Matsubara, who would later join Chang in Hayaino Daisuki and GridLink, called Discordance Axis “one of the greatest bands.”
“I will love DxAx forever,” he said.
Gate guitarist and vocalist Toshinori Otake called The Inalienable Dreamless “the most favorite of my favorites.” The Japanese grindcore duo have covered Discordance Axis extensively, including contributing covers of “The Inalienable Dreamless” and “Radiant Arkham” to Our Last Day. As a band, Otake said Gate was immediately influenced by Discordance Axis. He felt pushed to write faster and more complex music after discovering Jouhou.
“Jouhou, this is the first one I listened to,” he said. “It was in 1999 or 2000, Gate was just formed. My first impression was like, ‘What the fuck!’ I'd never listened to this kind of grindcore music. I had started writing some songs for Gate, like our first demo and Soon to be Sodomized 7-inch, just after listening to Discordance Axis. I wanted to play [in a] faster and [more] complex way.”

Killing Yield

Many grind bands cite Discordance Axis – particularly Marton’s guitar performance – as an important influence, but Marton said he’s reluctant to take any credit for inspiring other musicians.
“I do hear stuff that I think, ‘Oh yeah that could totally be an influence.’ Maybe it could be, maybe not,” Marton said. “I never want to think it was our influence. Maybe. Maybe somebody did. I don’t have the feeling we were that influential. Maybe we were.”
Though Discordance Axis never meshed with the grindcore and metal scene during their life, posthumously the band has found champions among cultural tastemakers who tout The Inalienable Dreamless as an important musical milestone. In March 2009 Decibel selected The Inalienable Dreamless for its Hall of Fame as part of its all-grindcore special issue, further cementing the album’s legendary status.
“To that point we had done a lot of the no brainers, Repulsion Horrified, Napalm Death Scum,” Decibel Editor in Chief Albert Mudrian, author of Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore, said. “We were doing a special grindcore issue at the time, and I was thinking of what great grindcore records hadn’t we included to that point.”
Inducting The Inalienable Dreamless into the Hall of Fame was “a logical next step for us,” representing the second wave of important grindcore bands that included Nasum and Pig Destroyer, Mudrian said.
“If anything at all, it’s still horribly unappreciated,” Mudrian said. “When people roll out the Mount Rushmore of grindcore, I don’t think for the most part they include that record. They’re picking one of the early Napalm Death records, they’re picking Horrified, they’re picking Symphonies of Sickness. Maybe they’re throwing in Brutal Truth. If they’re searching for credibility, maybe they’ll throw some S.O.B. in there. I think there’s some romanticism of the '90s and late '80s. … It’s going to change. It’s going to take time for that stuff to be fully accepted and appreciated. I’ve got friends who are my age who still love extreme metal and classic records and I feed them stuff to check out. I guarantee the majority of them haven’t heard that record.”
Hydra Head co-owner Aaron Turner said there’s an authenticity to The Inalienable Dreamless. Discordance Axis was unwilling to bend artistically to accommodate what was accepted and conventional at the time. The honesty and emotional integrity are what elevate The Inalienable Dreamless from the grindcore masses, attracting a new wave of fans and admirers a decade after the band’s demise.
“One of the things that made them able to do what they were doing with a single-minded approach is they didn’t care what scene they were a part of. They weren’t trying to keep up with their peers,” Turner said. “[Chang] is very determined to get things done the right way. I totally respect that work ethic and that creative focus. It wouldn’t seem that unusual for that kind of thing to exist if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of people seem content to do things to the point they’re good enough.”
For Discordance Axis “good enough” was never good enough.
“With The Inalienable Dreamless we had a common vision, a common goal,” Chang said. “It was three people bringing their A Game to the plate. At that point we had an A Game because we’d been doing it for 10 years. We never took a step back. We never made a Harmony Corruption or ‘Greed Killing.’ ”

Compiling Autumn Part 6: I Will Live Forever. Alone.

There is death in everything
We are connected without reason at all
You have your way with me like a lover
But I spite you because I just want the end of the world
“Oratorio in Gray”

Inalienable Rights

The posthumous popularity of Discordance Axis, particularly The Inalienable Dreamless, came as a bit of a surprise to the band. Though their third album garnered much better reviews than either Ulterior or Jouhou, which were dismissed as pretentious at the time, Discordance Axis’ existence was plagued by only moderate success and often empty halls during their infrequent live performances.
“The record was a really mixed reception,” vocalist Jon Chang said. “Maximum Rock N Roll really shit on it. I remember reading some other reviews. We got some very positive response, Terrorizer magazine, specifically. I think it was the best-selling Discordance Axis record, the best received Discordance Axis record.”
Coming with Hydra Head’s imprimatur may have also given The Inalienable Dreamless more legitimacy than Discordance Axis’ past albums, drummer Dave Witte said. The label had already established a reputation for fostering musicians willing to sidestep metal and hardcore’s artistic limitations.
“A lot of people actually liked this. It was kind weird,” Witte said. “Everything with that band, it was late for people to catch on. People got it later. People are dying for us to play a show these days. I don’t think it will happen. When it came out, it was kind of shocking. ... It was definitely different because it was Hydra Head, and it reached way more people than the others did. The reaction was immediately different. It took people a little while to catch on, I think.”
Though Discordance Axis have often been dismissed as pretentious for the eschewing the accepted grindcore formula, Decibel Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian, author of Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore, said the band’s artistry was focused and deliberate rather than intellectual affectation.
“I don’t see pretense,” he said. “I do see a willful artfulness about what they were doing. They weren’t trying to be willfully exclusive for people. They didn’t want to say, ‘You don’t get this.’ It was, ‘This is what we’re doing and if you get it, cool.’”
Hydra Head co-owner Aaron Turner said The Inalienable Dreamless has had a significant impact on the musical landscape. It was the right record to harness a brewing change in musical and artistic tastes, he said.
“The presentation and the album itself had a really big impact,” Turner said. “It was an undeniable record. … Maybe by the time Inalienable came out people were ready for that. It seemed like one of those records that clicked.”

Human Collateral

The Inalienable Dreamless’ enduring popularity largely mystifies Discordance Axis, who never reaped the benefits of that recognition during their time together. It was only in the last four years when Chang found a MySpace page for Discordance Axis (masquerading as an official site that has since been taken over by the band) that he began to understand the band’s influence and legacy.
“I was really shocked that not only anybody remembered the record, but liked it and knew about it,” Chang said. “Maybe because the reception at the time was ‘Assück was cool; Discordance Axis were not.’ We were not what people wanted to hear. We never were in the States.”
Though The Inalienable Dreamless is now regarded as a grindcore classic, guitarist Rob Marton still can’t help feeling some disappointment with how the record sounds and how he played some of the songs. Though his performance is one of the most praised aspects of the album, the guitarist is critical of his playing.
“It was really difficult to play some of these songs. I muddled through some of it. We couldn’t go back and redo that. There were some subtle things that drive me absolutely bananas when I hear it that nobody would really hear,” Marton said. “There were some songs I had to fast forward through; I couldn’t even hear it. We had an experience playing those songs. There was time when we were so on and we couldn’t wait to record that and that’s not what we recorded. We had to take what we had.”
For all of his concerns, Marton has since made his peace with what The Inalienable Dreamless is and how it’s since been received by a new generation of grindcore fans, even if he remains mystified by the response.
“I listen to it now and I enjoy and I do like it,” Marton said. “I still hear what I heard. I understand now why I felt like I did. I’m surprised by the legacy. I thought it would be a flash in the pan. It’s been how many years now? I’m still talking about this album. I didn’t think I’d be interviewed about it 11 years later.”
Witte, who has since anchored dozens of cutting-edge hardcore and metal bands, ranks The Inalienable Dreamless as his favorite record in his extensive catalog of work.
“I’m really proud of that record. It had a lot of passion and a lot of energy and lot of dynamics,” Witte said. “A lot of people would give us shit and say we’re pretentious at the time. We didn’t give a shit. We were just writing what we liked. Our influences were what we liked.”
For his part, Chang is still unsure what it was about The Inalienable Dreamless that provoked such a reaction from fans because his current band, GridLink, is also no stranger to playing mostly empty halls, despite being critical darlings.
“I’ve never really talked to anybody about why they like the record other than people in interviews asking me questions about it,” Chang said. “I’ve never really thought about it that much, I guess. I don’t know what people attach themselves to. … There isn’t this big want or need for this kind of music. That’s my feeling at least in my neck of the woods.”
Unlike the band, Hydra Head immediately recognized Discordance Axis had created something unique and enduring.
“I felt like it was a really special record right from the get-go,” Turner said. “It had a unique air about it. It did feel like one of those landmark records. I feel like there is a lot of homogeny in grindcore where people are trying to adhere very closely to a set of requisite ideas and parameters in which you can operate and still be grind. One of the things about Discordance Axis was they completely defied that at the time. That’s the definition of a trendsetter.”

Compiling Autumn Part 5: Typeface

Cloud swabs white on grey overcast skirt the deck at a steady gait
“Compiling Autumn”

Pattern Blue

The Inalienable Dreamless not only revolutionized how grindcore would sound and what subjects were acceptable lyrical fodder, it also radically altered the visual lexicon of album packaging. It challenged audience expectations of what the genre could do artistically. From the art to the fonts to the packaging, The Inalienable Dreamless is the story of every element of an album contributing to a total listener experience that is idiosyncratic and unique.
More than being a gimmick, the DVD packaging was a crucial element in vocalist Jon Chang’s effort to present the album as an intensely personal experience. Building on the cathartic lyrics, the packaging was meant to mimic the experience of reading someone’s diary, getting a furtive peek into another person’s interior life.
“A lot of my writing in general was coming from I didn’t understand people and how to relate to them. The Inalienable Dreamless and having all the dead leaves inside, I wanted it to look like a journal,” Chang said. “I wanted it to look really personal. That’s part of the reason I wanted the DVD format. I just don’t like the aspect ratio of CDs. I just wanted something more evocative, more cinematic if you will.”
The striking seascape artwork and use of unique or hand-lettered fonts was also a deliberate break from prior grindcore albums, including Discordance Axis’ own. For The Inalienable Dreamless, Chang said he was determined to create something that would stand out on a record store shelf. The Inalienable Dreamless’ packaging came devoid of anything – including song titles – that would hint at its contents. There was only the cryptic pronouncement on the back cover, "I will live forever. Alone." The iconic ocean horizon photo – taken outside of the Sea Bright, New Jersey, beach house where drummer Dave Witte was living at the time – defied every punk, metal and grindcore convention. There were no black and white photos of dead bodies, no grisly gore, no repurposed political trappings. The Inalienable Dreamless, visually, immediately jumped out when placed next to contemporary albums. Inside, the hand-lettered lyric sheet and autumnal-themed artwork also contributed to that scrapbook feel.
“Enough of the dark imagery. The music is going to sell that,” Chang said. “On the cover I want to show this horizon. Something that’s open and hopeful, but inside here’s the reality. That’s why the back says ‘I will live forever.’ Then, ‘Alone.’ ”
Photographer Scott Kinkade, whose work has appeared in Decibel magazine and who shot both GridLink album covers, met Chang at a Philadelphia show in 1996. Kinkade said the singer is "deep rooted and methodical" as a visual artist, careful to tie his lyrics to anchor his artwork in his musical metaphors to create a cohesive artistic package. The Inalienable Dreamless is "the 'art' record to me," Kinkade said.
"The artwork is the perfect contrast of visual elements to the music Discordance Axis created," Kinkade said. "The vastness of a never-ending sky, which at one time, the cover image was going to have a human element involved but was nixed. The text 'I will live forever. Alone.' Quite chilling, but a riddle that holds the record all together. I do not think there are many artists/designers thinking like Jon. The Inalienable Dreamless was out of the box different. No one will try to recreate it. The work would get pinned to this record."

Aperture of Pinholes

Though the band’s requests may have put off other labels, Hydra Head was immediately supportive of Discordance Axis’ vision for The Inalienable Dreamless. The art was just as important as the music in creating that unique album experience.
“We’ve always been proponents of our artists doing exactly what they want for what’s right for their record. We were really excited,” label co-owner Aaron Turner said. “Not many people had done CDs in DVD packages. That seemed like a great idea. Chang wasn’t contrary for the sake of being contrary. It suited the record well. We got into Jon’s ideas and that made us even more excited about working with them. … The packaging is anything but dark. It’s this bright blue seascape. There’s no splattery logo. It wasn’t willfully contradictory. All the pieces definitely fit.”
For the other members of the band, as with the lyrics, they trusted Chang’s vision, giving him the autonomy to craft the album’s constituent parts and organize its artwork.
“He totally masterminded that whole thing,” guitarist Rob Marton said. “He told us what we were going to do and we said, ‘Awesome.’ Me and Dave just looked at each and said, ‘Cool,’ and he knocked it out.”
That artistic autonomy was also a key motivator when Discordance Axis agreed to work with Hydra Head.
“That was the thing that really sold Jon,” Witte said. “Jon had this way of doing it and was really strict about it. Hydra Head not only offered us quality music, but they cared and went the extra mile with the packaging. … I knew Aaron from Isis and playing shows and seeing him around and I knew what Hydra Head was about, but it was an alien world for Jon. I think when that happened he was like, ‘Cool.’ It’s really rare to have a huge list of demands like that and the label to go, ‘Sure.’ It’s unheard of.”
Bizarre fonts and exotic packaging were not the only demands Discordance Axis were known to place on labels and distributors. For prior albums, Chang said he had put constraints on Devour, such as not letting their music be shipped through major distribution channels “because we were trying to be punk rock or something stupid.”
Discordance Axis also attempted to make The Inalienable Dreamless slightly more eco-friendly by otherwise minimizing the packaging, a move undone by retailers and distributors.
“The Inalienable Dreamless shipped without shrink wrap because I didn’t want to create all that plastic garbage and record stores would shrink wrap it,” Chang said. “I was fighting a losing battle.”
Turner said he simply accepted the band’s requests. It also didn’t hurt Witte warned the label about Chang’s artistic intentions in advance.
“We were often unorthodox in our approach, and [Witte] thought that might be a good fit given Chang’s demands for how things needed to go from a label,” Turner said. “Witte gave us some forewarning. He said Chang, by some people’s standards, is very hard to work with. He has very specific standards for people he works with. We weren’t put off by that. … Over the years he’s softened up. We like working with bands that do things in unorthodox ways. Whenever possible we try to avoid doing things in a conventional way. In that way Jon has turned out to be a perfect working partner for us.”

Compiling Autumn Part 4: Jigsaw

Start from the outside find the edges
Look for patterns in the seams
Some pieces fit together wrong
Remaining parts seem to fit nowhere
But you can force my teeth together
If you think that it will make you happy
“Jigsaw”

Come Apart Together, Come Together Alone

Recording The Inalienable Dreamless was different from past Discordance Axis sessions in one notable respect:
“We were prepared this time. That was the huge difference,” drummer Dave Witte said, laughing. “The way it worked in the end, the other records we would record a song on the boombox and go, ‘Done,’ and record another on a boombox. Then we’d bring the boombox to the studio and then record it for real on the tape. Relearn it and record it.”
Unlike Ulterior or Jouhou where songs were relearned, rewritten or simply created whole in the studio, Discordance Axis entered Trax East in late 1999 practiced to perfection. Rehearsals found the band playing the record straight through in order twice as they built up the stamina and cohesion necessary to deliver the demanding songs. The level of preparation for The Inalienable Dreamless was “unheard of” for Discordance Axis, Witte said.
“That was the first record we were all generally excited about and rehearsed in advance,” he said.
Honed to precision, the band realized they needed to record the music before they lost their edge.
“At some point we’re like, we’re done,” guitarist Rob Marton said. “We’ve got to get into the studio. We prepared I don’t know how many months before. We’ve got to be spot on.”
But all their preparation was nearly wasted when engineer Steve Evetts, who had worked with the band previously, quit Trax East two weeks before the session. The studio wanted Discordance Axis to push back the recording until mid-2000, something the band said would have been devastating.
“We were right at the razor’s edge at that point,” vocalist Jon Chang said. “You can only stay that good for so long. We were practicing multiple times a week. We never did that kind of shit for Discordance Axis. We were a once a week band, if we were lucky. If we had to delay, it would have been a disaster.”
Narrowly avoiding a delay, Discordance Axis enlisted Boston engineer Jon D’Uva at the last minute. D’Uva came recommended by Bill T. Miller, who had recorded Jouhou. One of Miller’s assistants, D’Uva had assisted on albums like Grief’s 1994 sludge touchstone Come to Grief, but he had never helmed his own session or worked with a grindcore band.
“[Miller] was like, ‘Hey do you want to do this band in Jersey.’ I wasn’t even doing this full time yet,” D’Uva said. “I had a day job. I said, ‘Let them fire me.’ ”
The four day session – which included recording, mixing and mastering – was a first for D’Uva in many ways. It was his first solo shot as a producer, his first project where a label was involved and it was also his first exposure to grindcore and Discordance Axis.
“He had never done fast music, but he did a great job,” Witte said. “He captured the band the way it sounds. It was a lot different from other people we worked with.”
Before D'Uva travelled to Trax East, Miller had given him old Discordance Axis records by way of background, but the session was a learning experience.
“I had touched upon it, but this was definitely intense,” D’Uva said. “The music was not understated. On the session when you’re an engineer, you can be engineering any style once you’re focused in. You’re not even listening to what the music is. You’re very technical. You’re making sure all the machines were on. It was all tape then.”

Mimetic

D’Uva calls himself The Inalienable Dreamless' "ghost engineer" because he was accidentally left off the album's liner notes. Though he laughs at the oversight, D'Uva also downplays his role in recording the album, choosing to describe himself as an engineer rather than a producer. As D’Uva describes the sessions, Discordance Axis came prepared, were able to nail most of the songs in a single take or two and immediately knew which takes felt right.
“For the most part it was a self-produced album,” D’Uva said. “They knew what takes were good. They knew what was tight enough. The sound of the band was defined. I wasn’t making decisions on the tempo or the arrangement.”
Witte and Chang said recording The Inalienable Dreamless was by far the easiest session in Discordance Axis’ turbulent relationship with recording studios.
“It was a not a nightmare recording session,” Chang said. “There were hard things in it, but we were never at each other’s throats, which was unusual for us.”
Marton’s recollections, however, are not so rosy. The compressed recording schedule took an extreme toll on the guitarist as he labored to nail the intricate parts he had written.
“I think I hated it as much as any other recording we did,” he said. “Jouhou was hellish and we couldn’t get anything right. [The Inalienable Dreamless] was a grueling three days. We weren’t even halfway through and my arm felt like cement. The songs were hard to play. They weren’t easy. It was the most grueling recording experience of all of them. I vowed to never to do it again. When that recording was done I absolutely hated it. I was like, what did we do? How it sounded in my head and how it came out, it was just too different. It was two different sounds. It was just the result of cramming for three days. That’s what we had. There was no other way we could have done it. It was hard.”
Chang has his own, unique way of motivating his bandmates during the laborious recording session. It involved holding up signs during takes that read “‘fuck your mother,’ something totally douchebaggy,” Chang said.
D’Uva said he recorded The Inalienable Dreamless the way he would have approached a jazz ensemble. He set up the microphones around the room – using only about half of the 24 tracks available in the studio – and turned Discordance Axis loose. Once the desired tones were dialed in, D’Uva said the actual recording flowed smoothly with minimal mistakes and very few attempts to punch back in and correct errors.
“Those guys didn’t play with a click track, didn’t play with headphones, nothing was edited: as is,” D’Uva said. “Jon sang while the band was playing. Ninety-five to 99 percent of that album is a live a capture.”
Though D’Uva said he had no input into the band’s songwriting or arrangements, he did suggest subtle touches to strengthen the album’s sound, including adding a subharmonic bass synthesizer to Marton’s guitar. The effect added extra presence without sacrificing the sharp, trebly sound. It helped create that sleek, vicious guitar sound that defines The Inalienable Dreamless.
“The guitar stayed bright and in your face and the box created the sub-bass,” D’Uva said.
For his part, Marton said The Inalienable Dreamless’ signature guitar sound was a matter of “trusting the producer and trying to get the best sound we could.”
Though the session was already short, Witte had an extra incentive to quickly capture his parts. Not knowing he was recording a career-defining album, the drummer was more interested in the holiday festivities at work.
“It was all quick. It was my company’s Christmas party, so I was racing to get the drum tracks to get out of there,” he said, laughing.
D’Uva said Witte was able to make the Christmas party because of his professionalism and practice.
“I remember Dave coming in and being surprised. This heavy aggressive band, his drum kit looked like a jazz drum kit,” D’Uva said. “The drums were nicely tuned. The toms weren’t too big. In my experience all the metal guys have these huge toms. … A drummer’s drummer, I thought, a guy who really studied, who is precise about his kit and precise about his drumming and he was.”

Attrition

Thanks to the grueling rehearsal schedule, Discordance Axis were able to capture the songs live in only a handful of takes without overhauling them the way they had during past sessions.
“We weren’t totally jacked up on caffeine like we were on Jouhou, but we were really excited about the music,” Chang said. “It came out pretty good. It was a good record. It was the only record where we went into the studio and didn’t radically change half the songs on the record.”
While Discordance Axis didn’t make wholesale changes to the songs in the studio as they had in the past, a few of The Inalienable Dreamless’ songs were reworked at the time. Witte excised a section from “Oratorio in Gray” the band had dubbed the “monkey blast” because he couldn’t synch up the timing properly.
“I personally never heard what was wrong with it,” Chang said. “At the time I didn’t understand what the problem was. That’s the only part of the record that got cut.”
The band did attempt to overdub the guitars on “The Third Children” because on the second verse “the drums are not even remotely following the guitar because it was so hard to record that song,” Chang said.
“Dave eventually kept going and said, ‘That’s my last take,’ ” he said. “That’s the only song of the record we tried to overdub the main guitar track to kind of fix it and we gave up at some point.”
The hardest song to set to tape, at least for Witte, was “Compiling Autumn.” However, all of the laborious practice sessions and the chemistry he had fostered with Marton paid off when Witte’s headphones fell off during the last take for the song.
“That was the days before punch-ins. I’d play songs multiple times to get it right,” Witte said. “That song was so hard because the midsection was super fast for me. We tried it over and over and there’s this accent in the middle where we lock up in the grind part. That’s one of the ones we were having a hard time with rehearsing. We never really had it down. The last time we did it my headphones fell off and I was feeling the song. They fell off and we kept going. We totally nailed it without me hearing the guitar.”
Though he’s proud of the work, Witte did say he still has minor qualms with how The Inalienable Dreamless sounds.
“I think it was more me not knowing what I wanted at the time,” he said. “The toms sounded great. I like everything the way it is. I wasn’t stoked on the snare drum sound. It’s my own fault.”
As much as The Inalienable Dreamless has defined Discordance Axis’ career, the album has also served as a landmark for D’Uva even as he’s expanded his repertoire, recording jazz bands and folk music. Though he’s never returned to grindcore since, the album represents an early peak in his work.
“It was definitely a proud moment,” D’Uva said. “It was the most intense record that I’ve ever recorded. Since then as an engineer, I’ve run the gamut of genres from plain old thrash to the most jazz and folk music there is. I remember after recording it, bringing it back and playing it for people and they were pretty impressed. Even though it was a little too heavy and fast for them, they thought, ‘This was the sickest, tightest stuff I’ve ever heard even if it’s not my thing.’ Even then it was, ‘Oh wow, this is a crazy record.’ ”

Compiling Autumn Part 3: Loveless

Let me share my heart with you
As I'm guided by the dead to a miserable end
“Vacuum Sleeve”

Information Sniper

Following on the themes developed with Jouhou, The Inalienable Dreamless was an emotional purgative for vocalist Jon Chang, a lyrical exorcism for feelings of pain, isolation and loneliness.
Chang said he often “retreated from people into fiction and games,” and he turned those passions into metaphors to express his anger and anxieties. With Jouhou, Discordance Axis had already moved away from grindcore’s narrow, safe, stereotypical preoccupation with social and political themes to delve into something more personal. Those ideas would flower to their fullest expression with The Inalienable Dreamless. The first album, Ulterior, was Discordance Axis’ attempt to place Napalm Death and Assuck’s political fixations “in a more interesting place.” However, as he matured, Chang said he found punk and grind’s sloganeering “naïve.”
“I didn’t want to write about politics,” Chang said. “If you’re in college, if you really have your eyes open, you realize so much of it’s bullshit. They all try to make it so black and white.”
Beginning with “Continuity,” the last song on Discordance Axis’ 1995 split with Melt-Banana, Chang said he strove to “go a little bit deeper.” It would become the Rosetta Stone song in Discordance Axis’ catalog, influencing how Chang approached his lyrics for both Jouhou and The Inalienable Dreamless.
The cancer-clouded song is full of evocative imagery and clever wordplay. Tongue-twisting lines like “Life tuned to a time table” show a deeper focus on lyrical rhythm while “Decapitated body of information/ Reassembled wrong into a smile” placed a new emphasis on capturing feelings of anxiety and unease. It’s an inwardly-focused song that captured Chang’s growing obsession with interpersonal relationships. With "Continuity" Chang began to focus more on “where I’m at rather than where I thought the world was at.”
“'Continuity’ was the first time I crossed over to write a song that tapped myself as the base and layered metaphor on top of it, rather than starting with fiction [or] abstract material to provide the base and inserting myself somewhere in between,” he said.

Euphoria Dejection

With his first steady job out of college, Chang said he was able to indulge his passion for anime and manga, making several trips to Japan every year just to watch movies or stock up on games and books that were not available in the United States.
“I was saving all my money, and I kept going to Japan,” Chang said. “Every four to six months I would go to Japan. One [trip] would be long, three or four weeks, and one would be short, a couple of days. I was showing up to movie premieres. I had never had money in my entire life. Now that I was making it, I wanted to spend it. I’ve never said anything about materialism. I’m such a collector.”
He increasingly drew inspiration from games, science fiction and the anime as lyrical springboards to express himself as a songwriter during that period. Though commonplace today, in the mid-1990s it was quite a radical departure from the narrow list of topics metal found acceptable lyrical fodder.
“It wasn’t anything that intentional at that point,” Chang said. “As a young person I didn’t understand where I was going with my work. I couldn’t think critically about my work at that point. … Jouhou was the start of that. Those metaphors seemed perfectly natural to me. They didn’t seem like they were coming out of left field."
Ultimately, The Inalienable Dreamless would be shaped by Chang’s discovery of the movie Evangelion Death : Evangelion Rebirth. The movie and the related anime series would serve as the master metaphor for Discordance Axis’ final album and much of Chang’s subsequent songwriting with his later band GridLink as well.
“I had a functional understanding of Japanese. I could follow a decent part of the movies I watched," Chang said. "I saw Evangelion and I understood 15 percent of what I saw, but emotionally, I understand 100 percent of it. It was like the death of a friend watching that movie. There’s been nothing like that in my life that I’ve been that crazy with, ever."
The themes of loss, courage, maturity and the desperate need for approval from distant parent figures that drove the story, ostensibly about Japanese teens suiting up in giant robots to fend off an alien invasion, made such an impression that it became the defining reference point for developing The Inalienable Dreamless’ lyrical conceits on songs such as "Pattern Blue," "Angel Present" "The End of Rebirth" and "The Third Children." Chang even credited himself as Eva05 in the album's liner notes in tribute to the series.
Chang connected with the emotional struggle of Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, who conceived and directed the series following a four-year bout with depression. The series was groundbreaking and controversial in Japan at the time for both its involved, psychologically rich plotline and for its violence.
“Evangelion is my life, and I have put everything I know into this work. This is my entire life. My life itself,” Anno said in a 1996 interview with anime and manga magazine Protoculture Addicts.
It was that kind of dedication to an artistic endeavor that drove Chang as he prepared himself for what would become The Inalienable Dreamless. With Anno as his inspiration, Chang said he felt compelled to make something as profound and personal as Evangelion, to replicate that experience in audio form.
“[Anno] had gone into a massive depression and retreated from society for a year, and when he returned he had written this thing,” Chang said. “He got this thing made somehow. I decided I had to write a new kind of record. If I wanted to do anything creatively ever again, I had to go to the same level this guy went. Me and the world and who am I and who I want to be.”
Focused on the musical end of The Inalienable Dreamless, drummer Dave Witte and guitarist Rob Marton allowed Chang free rein with his lyrics.
“We’d just let Jon go wild. We’d do the music. In our mind, we’re the musicians. We’d write the songs and play the music. He’s the singer. Who are we to tell him what to do? All three of us expressed ourselves the way we wanted to,” Witte said.
While there’s a searing emotional honesty that screams through Chang’s performance on The Inalienable Dreamless, the lyrics are intentionally shrouded in several layers of metaphor and striking imagery. Chang declines to discuss the individual meanings of his songs. Instead, he said he prefers for listeners to draw their own conclusions, infusing the songs with their own, personal interpretations. However, as with Jouhou, Chang said much of The Inalienable Dreamless is obsessed with the difficulties of interpersonal relationships, particularly those with women.
“I just didn’t know how to relate to women at all. I still don’t know if I do, despite being married,” Chang said. “Jouhou is so much about my inability to have a stable relationship with a chick. It sounds funny now, but half the fucking songs are about that shit.”
Chang’s bandmates are also content to leave the lyrics unexamined, respecting the singer’s emotions and his reticence.
“It’s super angry and poetic. I don’t have any emotional attachment to it because it’s cryptic,” Witte said. “There was a lot of inner hatred, too, that shined through from Jon, personally. At the end of the day I was really proud of that record. ‘I will live forever. Alone.’ That pretty much gets to the point.”

Compiling Autumn Part 2: Grindcore Ninja Commando Team

Reinventing the wheel so many times

I've become calloused to its genius
“Sound Out the Braille”

The Old Ball and Chang

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 guitarist Rob Marton and drummer Dave 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.”

Wheels Within Wheels

Discordance Axis’ two year break had allowed Marton to spend more time writing in private, refining bits of riffs and songs on his own. He said that made them “more of a personal experience” than previous Discordance Axis material.
“I didn’t have - I don’t want to say the shackles of Jon Chang - but the sky was the limit,” he said.
Marton’s playing style was also evolving into the technical, demanding riffing that would further separate Discordance Axis from their punks-on-speed grindcore peers. However, he was careful to ground technique in strong songwriting, never succumbing to the impulse to pursue complicated riffs for their own sake.
“I never purposely tried to make it technical,” Marton said. “I guess we did want to bring something else to grind. All my choices are just what I want to hear. What would take me some place? It wasn’t, ‘We’re going to make it really technical on this part and contrast it with this slow part.’ It was just what felt good.”
Witte said outside influences like Voivod, with their unique chord phrasings, separated Discordance Axis from bands who were content to rehash what Napalm Death and Repulsion had already done. While speed was certainly a central priority, Witte said Discordance Axis also never lost sight of what made songs memorable.
“Most grind bands never had a riff,” he said. “Rob really stood out in that world because his riffs were super memorable. He knew how to write a catchy riff that worked in the context of what we were doing.”
One of the songwriting tricks that flourished during that time was Marton’s penchant for slashing a half time riff up against Witte’s blastbeasts, creating a unique, dynamic tension between guitar and drums on songs such as “Angel Present,” “The Necropolitan” and “Pattern Blue.”
“It’s just something I like to hear,” Marton said. “When I write, I love that contrast. That type of contrast pulls me into it. I have fun with that. It’s just like when I try to write something, I try to have it take me somewhere. Those types of riffs do it for me. I like a hook. I like to be hooked in a song.”
Witte said the slow riff/blasting drums dynamic was also a bit of a band inside joke, a subtle undermining of Chang’s insistence on playing all grind, all the time.
“You could blame that on Jon early on because he was like, ‘It’s got to be grind, it’s got to be fast,’ ” Witte said. “At one point whatever riff Rob brought in, I’d try to do a blast beat over it to see if it worked. Whatever it was, I’d try to put a blast beat under it. That’s how that push-pull was born."
Whatever its genesis, Witte said tension between the guitar and drums allowed Discordance Axis add dynamism to their songs, better harnessing the energy to generate an explosive climax.
“When you’re building up or coming to some climax - when you reach that and we combine forces - it’s like extra explosive,” he said. “We’re kind of restrained at some points. I don’t know how to explain it. That formula really worked well for us.”
That dynamic approach would find its fullest expression on songs like “Jigsaw,” a largely instrumental, eternally cresting grindcore tsunami that combines precision drumming with Marton’s spiraling riffing to explosive effect.
Marton's riffs also prodded Witte to push his drumming further. It was that time when Witte was focused a humble goal: “to be the fastest guy in the world.”
“I was pushing myself pretty hard. I was focused on being the fast guy,” Witte said. “In my mind, blastbeasts, I have to be inspired and feel the riff to do a blastbeat. I just can’t sit there with any guitar player and bust out blast beats. I have to feel the riff. Rob’s riffs totally gave me that platform to jump off of. Then you threw Chang in there and it was like throwing gas on a flame.”
Some of the songs on The Inalienable Dreamless, including “A Leaden Stride to Nowhere” and “Drowned,” were leftovers from an album Discordance Axis had planned to record after Jouhou. Though the two year breakup scuttled those plans, the band dusted off the songs when it came time to write The Inalienable Dreamless.
Though he remained active musically during the band's hiatus, Marton said he’s not the type of songwriter who sits at his guitar all day working over a song. Instead, he writes best when he follows a spark of inspiration. In fact, during the two year break after Jouhou, he would often go for days without picking up an instrument.
“Sometimes I just get this sense like I feel inspired or I know I’m going to write something so I sit down and do it. Other times it’s an accident,” Marton said. “It’s not for all day. Generally, the best songs I write in a few minutes. Something will happen and I’ll write a riff, and then literally in a span of 10 or 15 minutes I’ll write a couple of riffs and, boom, there’s a song.”
Both “The Necropolitan” and “The End of Rebirth” were songs that flowed quickly, Marton said.
The songwriting process was propelled by Marton and Witte’s growing connection as performers. Both musicians said they seemed to instinctively comprehend what the other was doing, even when they were hashing out the basics of a new song.
“Most of them are kind of written that way,” Marton said. “Some of the songs me and Dave would just be noodling around on some riff and Dave would put drums on it. Me and Dave would have this thing where I would play something and he would know what I was playing.”
“Rob Marton and I had this amazing chemistry together where we would just jam in a room and just stop together without even synching it,” Witte said. “We worked really, really well together. It was just like a glove, the guitar and drums really fit.”
With that growing confidence, Witte and Marton also felt more comfortable standing up to Chang when he would try to interfere with their songwriting.
“Sometimes Jon would come and say, ‘Do this,’ and we’d say, ‘You don’t play an instrument, dude.’ It was really easy with just the two us,” Witte said.

Why So Serious?

What may not be readily apparent from the relentless aggression of the music and Chang’s excoriating lyrics about failed love and isolation is that two-thirds of Discordance Axis were there to have a good time. Witte and Marton's rehearsals turned into “a comedy volleyball match between Rob and I with instruments,” the drummer said.
“There was a lot humor based around the songwriting. We made ourselves laugh,” Witte said. “… Jon was a very serious person the way he conducted himself and his lyrics. It’s really deep. He was very angry. Rob and I just wanted to play tunes, and we weren’t really angry about everything. It was not a complete joke, [but] we liked to fool around a lot.”
“A Leaden Stride to Nowhere,” with its monotonous pounding, the “Mexican Hat Dance” ending to “Angel Present” or the pick slide opening to “Radiant Arkham” were intended to be jokes. To the instrumental members of the band, those elements were deliberately absurd, sly parodies of musical pretension.
“At the same time we were like, ‘We’re going to do what we want this time,’” Witte said. “The big joke was a lot of the stuff is funny. We thought it sounded funny. At some points like ‘A Leaden Stride to Nowhere,’ we were like, ‘Jon’s going to hate this,’ but he wound up liking it.”
Though “A Leaden Stride to Nowhere” may have started out as a joke, the song’s ominous, relentlessly building menace is also integral to The Inalienable Dreamless’ overall impact. It was the slow rolling thundercloud that presaged the final lightning strike that was “Drowned."
“Doing 20 accents, that was a joke too. We were fooling around with the accents,” Witte said. “I remember us being in this little room in New Brunswick and we said, 'Let’s do it 20 times.' We were laughing our asses off. It’s a huge part of the record. It’s a huge windup for the end. It seems pretty simple, but it’s technical in some ways. We were proud of the song, but the 20 accents, we thought it was funny. When we played it live it was a whole different animal. You really had to lay into your instrument.”

A Leaden Stride to Somewhere

Though Witte and Marton may have exerted their independence when writing The Inalienable Dreamless, they deferred to Chang when it came to sequencing the songs for the album. Chang used the songs the band had written to create a narrative flow that propels the album.
“Whenever I do the track order for any record or live event, I try to create a flow that matches the songs,” he said. “Does the ending of one part complement the beginning of another? What's the lead-in song, what's the last song and what is the end of the second act (generally the last track on the A-side of the record)? Records are just like stories. They need structure with multiple layers of introduction and conclusion that are stretched across the record.”
Chang said he conceived The Inalienable Dreamless as three suites – “Castration Rite” through “Vacuum Sleeve,” “Angel Present” through “Pattern Blue” and “The End of Rebirth” through “The Third Children.” “A Leaden Stride to Nowhere” and “Drowned” were intended to serve as a “surprise second ending” like the film Alien.
“It’s like the experience of giving blood,” Marton said. “That whole album, the tempo of every song and how it pulls you through it, it feels like you’ve been through something when you’re through with it. We were all on board to just be relentless. Reign in Blood was relentless. That was my feeling. That was in my head.”

Compiling Autumn Redux

As of Wednesday, Compiling Autumn is now out of print. For those of you who bought a copy, you now have a priceless heirloom to pass down to your great-great-grandchildren (who will roll their eyes at your quaint grindcore and lecture you on the finer points of Tibetan dubstep jazz). For those of you that coughed up the eight bucks, thank you. At last count you guys have sent somewhere in the ballpark of $350 to the Japanese Red Cross. So thank you for chipping in for a worthy cause.
Now about you cheap ass sumbitches who couldn't scrape up a few lousy dollars... I kid.
But what's gonna happen now is what I intended from the first day Jon Chang approached me with this whole cockamamie scheme: I'm gonna blog the whole thing like I originally planned. That's right, if you would have waited you could have had it all for free. Suckers.
And now I'm gonna take that giant grindcore paycheck we scammed off you schmucks and move my sexroids to some breezy tropical island to live out my days.

Compiling Autumn Part 1: Continuity

This is my memory
A lonely series
Repeats without even a pause
Floating weightless
Uninterrupted until I exhale
Ghosts have no shadows
They must conspire for even one
“Angel Present”

Hydra Head Records’ reissue of Discordance Axis’ second album, Jouhou closes with 15 minutes of the sound of workers quietly cleaning up a Japanese loft after a 1997 show with noise band Melt-Banana. It was an artifact of the DAT machine that recorded the show left running accidentally, but at the time Discordance Axis thought it might be their epitaph.
Despite the success of the Japanese tour, a combination of a hellacious recording session for Jouhou, health concerns and typical intra-band squabbling sidelined Discordance Axis for two years, threatening to cut short the career of one of grindcore’s most innovative artists. When they ultimately reunited to record their third and final album, Discordance Axis would annihilate 15 years of stale grindcore conventions in a single 23 minute statement of artistic purity. The result, 2000's The Inalienable Dreamless, was a landmark album, the first truly 21st Century grindcore record.
Where their peers were content to recycle the same musical and lyrical affectations handed down from Napalm Death and Repulsion, The Inalienable Dreamless saw Discordance Axis further refine the themes that had defined their career to unleash something that was wholly unique and personally meaningful. The Inalienable Dreamless would be an album that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of grindcore for a decade to come. It was a record whose influence was not immediately recognized but whose reach would grow pervasive.
With The Inalienable Dreamless, Discordance Axis established a musical legacy that will live forever but, given the album’s devoted fanbase, definitely not alone.

Pirouetting like a fan dancer
Choreographed into the desire for rebirth
Or just a wish for death
“The Inalienable Dreamless”

Ruin Trajectory

During its life, Discordance Axis’ sleek, forward-thinking assault on grindcore convention always found its greatest success in Japan. The trio - vocalist Jon Chang, guitarist Rob Marton and drummer Dave Witte - played to packed houses overseas where rare domestic performances only mustered crowds of 20 or 30. The support they received in Japan sustained the band throughout their career.
“That tour was pretty cool,” Chang said of the Jouhou tour. “We didn’t get into any arguments. Nobody broke down. Nobody went insane. When the last show came, we put everything into it. Dave was smoking ass that night, I wish I had video of it. It was the most violent show we ever played.”
But before the tour got underway the cracks were already showing. Regular guitarist Marton had left the band, leaving Witte and Chang to enlist Human Remains guitarist Stephen Procopio as a last minute stand in.
The 1997 tour was organized by HG Fact and Devour Records, which had supported many of Discordance Axis’ albums to that point. However, it had been repeatedly postponed to avoid competition from other, more notable metal bands who were also touring Japan at the time. The delays drove a frustrated Marton out of the band, starting a two year schism that crippled Discordance Axis.
“There was a big falling out with Rob and myself over the repeated tour delays. I was the driving force trying to lock those shows down, but with so many other bigger acts touring, the shows kept getting pushed back because the promoters wanted to make sure the tour was as successful as possible. I think Rob got sick of it because he kept having to go to his job and request the time off. His boss would arrange for coverage and then the dates would shift again, monkey wrenching the whole process. Between that and all the other shit in his life, he finally just quit the band. Suffice to say, like our many other break ups, it was not cordial,” Chang said. “That was basically World War Six starting right there. I literally didn’t talk to Rob for two or three years at that point.”
For much of Discordance Axis' existence, conflict was the norm, Marton said.
“I don’t think anything was ever that smooth. We were never ‘Aw great, let’s get together guys, gee whiz.’ It was like a job. We all wanted to do it. We would get excited about it,” Marton said. “Being in a band is kind of like having two girlfriends, sort of. You’re in a relationship with them. You get under each other’s skin. You start to anticipate each other’s moves at some point. You get close to people. You get close to people you’re in a band with. You can imagine where it’s great. Sometimes it’s not.”
Marton's departure was the culmination of intra-band friction that had been roiling since Discordance Axis’ agonizing recording session for Jouhou with producer Bill T. Miller. Recording in a studio in Boston with no air conditioning, far from home and practically subsisting on a diet of Mountain Dew and Jolt cola, the trio were at each other’s throats incessantly. It wasn’t uncommon for one of the members to suddenly walk out of the studio in a rage, leaving the remainder to wonder if he would ever come back.
“It was really bad, how close we were to literally murdering each other,” Chang said. “We just never recovered from that. We were insane from that point forward. At one point they asked me to go out and get soda and I said, ‘Fuck you! Go get your own soda.’ ”
The stress was compounded by Chang’s notorious perfectionism. As a photography student in college, one professor, in particular, had pushed him relentlessly. Her demand for perfection would not only tax his photography skills, but it also opened Chang’s eyes to just how far he could go with his talents – whatever the medium – provided he was willing to pay the price to achieve it.
“She made me go through the darkroom on this [photograph] for two fucking days. It was a nightmare to get it there, but when I got it and she said I got it, and I knew I’d gotten it before I showed it to her, I was more happy with that picture, which was nothing special, than anything I’d done up until that point. I was still a freshman in college and while people had pushed me to do better on things before, they were not on any kind of things I cared about,” Chang said. “When it came time to do a band, I approached it from that direction. This is an opportunity to do something great. It is not sitting around and having fun and jerking off. That’s been a problem for me in my life: taking projects and turning them into art projects. I really want it to be at a certain place. I wanted to eclipse what Napalm Death had done for me at that point. Not to make From Enslavement to Obliteration, but to make the record they would have made after. That was Ulterior for me.”
Though Chang’s bandmates could appreciate his drive and the results, the intensity inevitably led to conflicts between the members. While that friction could drive Discordance Axis’ songs, it also took an emotional toll on Witte, Chang and Marton and breakups and hiatuses were a regular occurrence for the band throughout its existence.
“The band had a really strange way,” Witte said. “It was like being completely excited and being completely over it. They went hand in hand.”

Flow My Tears, the Guitarist Said

When Marton quit the band after recording Jouhou and before the band’s scheduled Japanese tour, they soldiered on without him, Procopio in tow. However, the band said Marton’s absence strained things even further. Afterward, Discordance Axis ground to a complete halt for two years.
“I got really burnt out on DA,” Chang said. “Rob had been a friend of mine since before the band. I hated to lose him as a friend. I didn’t like playing the songs anymore. It didn’t make me feel good. It wasn’t like a cathartic experience at all. It was like reopening old wounds.”
Though Witte and Chang had been eager to tour in support of Jouhou, playing live had never been Marton’s passion.
“The end of Jouhou we were still a band that played very infrequently,” Witte said. “Rob was totally not into playing shows. That’s how it was most of the time, anyway. We all had very different schedules. When we were recording with Bill in Boston, Rob was still on his overnight shift."
Marton’s health was also a factor in his decision to quit. Though stories have persisted that he was plagued by irreparable nerve damage that caused seizures when he was exposed to loud noises, the truth is Marton has had tinnitus his entire life and feared playing in Discordance Axis could permanently damage his hearing.
“I’ve had tinnitus since I was a kid. It had just gotten to the point I thought it was too much,” he said. “I thought I was really doing damage to my hearing. At that point I went to a couple different doctors, and I was pretty much, ‘Doc, it hurts when I do this,’ and he said, ‘Don’t do it anymore.’ ”
While he never had seizures, Marton said the ringing in his ears would cause the sounds to break up when he was playing, interfering with his performance.
“I had symptoms like, 'Hey, you’re losing your hearing,' ” he said. “I had headaches and stuff and that was related to other things. I got into a car accident and I had whiplash and I had headaches.”

Reincarnation

Witte, who has always kept himself busy with multiple bands at once, turned his musical attentions to Black Army Jacket during Discordance Axis' two year break. However, after tempers had a chance to cool, Witte found himself itching to grind again and began corralling his wayward bandmates.
“Dave was the one who actually got us back together,” Chang said. “Dave had somehow gotten in touch with the Hydra Head guys and he contacted me and he said, ‘Hey, do you want to do another record?’ I said I didn’t want to do it without Rob. I’m not sure if he had gotten Rob on board at that point. I had half of The Inalienable Dreamless written before we knew it was going to be a record.”
Marton and Chang, now with two years’ perspective and maturity behind them, were able to reconcile during a trip to Cape Cod. Between time on the beach and intense Quake sessions, the two reconnected and found the drive to reform Discordance Axis.
“I ended up hanging out with Rob alone for a day,” Chang said. “We went up there cold and we didn’t book a room. When we got to Cape Cod we found a hotel immediately and it was reasonably priced. I had a long talk with Rob. We said sorry and tried to patch things up between us. A lot had changed between us at that time. I don’t think he was with the girl he was with at the time we did Jouhou. He was no longer working graveyard shifts. We were all older. We all had jobs at that point and our offices used to play Quake against each other at night. We were really good at that game.”
Marton had been busy writing music during the two year hiatus, but he said his new material was very different from what he had done with Discordance Axis. However, after reconciling with Chang and writing with Witte, the grind began flowing again.
“Everybody had it in them,” Marton said. “I just started writing songs again. They were Discordance Axis songs, and I had a whole bunch of them. The momentum built behind it and we started talking. Things just happened from there.”
As the band reformed, Witte introduced them to Hydra Head Records, which would issue The Inalienable Dreamless and subsequently put the bulk of the band’s catalog into wider distribution.
“I’d been familiar with some of the other things he had done,” Hydra Head co-owner Aaron Turner said of Witte. “I’d seen Black Army Jacket a few times. Dave’s the kind of guy that if you’re in the metal underground, you’re bound to run into him.”
Though Hydra Head has never been known as a grindcore label, Turner said the forward thinking spirit of Discordance Axis blended well with the label’s preference for bands that skewed outside listener expectations. It didn’t hurt that despite his preference for slower, more atmospheric music, Turner was a Discordance Axis fan, himself.
“Jouhou had such a crazy effect on me. I got it on a whim. The cover got to me. It was very cryptic. Totally mesmerized by it,” Turner said. “At that time I hadn’t considered working with them, taking them on as a Hydra Head band. When the opportunity arose, I jumped at the chance. They were a very unique band. Their music was heavy and metal-oriented. The only criteria we’ve had is we’ve tended to stick to things that were heavy or metal-oriented. We really like to work with artists that are the vanguard of their subgenre and have very clear artistic intent and have a very well developed visual aesthetic. Discordance Axis is the perfect Hydra Head band.”