Showing posts with label extreme noise terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extreme noise terror. Show all posts

Monday, January 7, 2013

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

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Holy Terror!

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the five stages of grief. Every huckster, two-bit pop psychologist on the tube is bound to break them out when “diagnosing” some bored, fat haus-frau’s malaise on any number of woo-spewing day time talk shows of the Oprah ilk. But friends, were you aware that there are six stages of grindcore terror? Probably not. But if I’m ever going to make Deepak Chopra-style cash peddling absolute bullshit, I need to get this concept out in the public consciousness. So all of you grab a box of tissues and your teddy bear because we’re going to talk about your feelings.

The first step toward curing your terror-related problem, naturally, is to admit you have a problem. You must admit to your Terrorism, as it were, before you can put yourself back on the path of healing and emotional well being. Terrorism has been known to cause manic behavior such as circlepitting your living room, grasping at citrus no one else can see and breaking out in wordless, animalistic roars that scare pets and small children. All of this is perfectly natural, of course, but you must admit that your Terrorism exists and that it is a problem for any sort of treatment to be successful.

Having admitted to your Terrorism, the second stage of therapy will seek to identify the locus of your terror, the agent acting upon you or Terrorizer. Common fears include heights, kissing grandma, spiders, Tim Curry in It or, often, three Hispanic dudes from Los Angeles and their affirmative action gringo friend grinding your fucking face to a bloody milkshake with one of the greatest albums ever recorded. Who knows what yours might be. These things tend to vary. Pick yours and I’ll proceed to beat it out of you.

The most difficult fears to diagnose are those that lack grounding in concrete reality – an Unseen Terror in professional parlance – because they are often a result of a shock to the psychological system. Like the day you found out that fat, balding guy from Napalm Death used to be a fucking great drummer or further realizing that somebody actually went to the trouble of writing grind songs about Garfield. However, don’t make the Human Error of thinking just because your fear can’t be seen that it can’t be treated.

Now that we’ve identified the source of your terror, we must evaluate its impact on your life to devise an appropriate treatment program. A mild Phobia can generally be effectively managed with a regimen of waterboarding and electric shocks to the genitalia from a car battery. But if you suffer from a more Excruciating Terror we may have to get more … creative … in our therapy choices. Say, a melon baller, the audiobook of Atlas Shrugged and a tube of tennis balls. I’ll let you work that out for yourself.

Should more conventional methods of addressing your terror prove ineffective, we can of course step you up to the Extreme Noise Terror protocol. The protocol often involves gathering a couple hundred unsmiling young white men in black shirts in a dank, stinky hole that pretends to be a club and subjecting them to tinnitus-inducing levels of screeching, shrieking noise you have somehow convinced them constitutes music while simultaneously gouging them on food and beer prices. Who said being a humanitarian can’t be profitable? Fun fact: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s fear of air travel was cured by a 72-hour, 300 decibel session of Britney Spears’ greatest hits at our Guantanamo Bay treatment facility. The regimen was not a total success, however. While his fear of flying had been addressed, he also developed a crippling phobia of whorish, washed up teen pop stars. Not that I blame him.

Should we be successful, the terror treatment program should leave you in a state Beyond Terror Beyond Grace. While you’ll likely have overcome your fears (possibly substituting a slew of new phobias in the process, say of sadistic therapists), you’ll also place yourself beyond your chosen deity’s grace and redemption given the treatment often results in patients screaming blasphemies and obscenities throughout (again: melon baller, Ayn Rand, tennis balls). While you’ve likely sacrificed your immortal soul in the process (should you ascribe to such a quaint notion), I guarantee the Andrew Childers treatment process will mean your original fear will be the furthest thing from your mind.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Grind in Rewind 2009: The Legacy League

Is it just me or has then been a fairly crappy year for punk and hardcore? Given that the pickings are so slim (and that I’ve yet to pick up the new BBTS, Weekend Nachos or Converge), I’m going to crown Wolfbrigade as this year’s prom queen and move on with a special jury prize going to Infernal Stronghold for their frost encrusted... umm ... crust. So in lieu of a d-beat retrospective and before we get to the real countdown, I decided to take a moment out to recognize the geezers of grind: those legacy bands that have been kicking around with greater and lesser degrees of success and decided to either reunite or just drop a new album in 2009.

5. Agathocles
Grind is Protest

Dis-Order
In a vain attempt to give the jingoistic hysteria and reflexive racism that characterized post-war American conservatism a patina of intellectual sheen, William F. Buckley wrote in the mission statement to his magazine National Review that the conservative was the person who “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Agathocles are the very kind of unrepentant liberal agitators that drove Buckley up the wall, but their music is the living embodiment of Buckley’s sentiments. The Belgians stand athwart musical history somewhere around 1989 yelling “Stop!” Grind is Protest is is largely indistinguishable from prior output from the band, and that’s just how they intend it. Mainstay Jan Frederickx has switched from bass to guitar and while some of his riffs may not flow as smoothly as past six stringers, the sincerity of conviction is the same. This may not be Frederickx’s Jericho moment, but it sure sounds like the thinks he can “tear down the walls of the ministries of arms” through grindcore alone.

4. Agoraphobic Nosebleed
Agorapocalypse
Relapse
Sure, ANb is not quite as legacy as some of those on this list, but with Anal Cunt, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Pig Destroyer, Japanese Torture Comedy Hour and solo work, it seems like Scott Hull has been a vital grind force since time immemorial. And dude is not done pitching curve balls to the slavering masses. Ditto ex-Enemy Soil/current Drugs of Faith mainman Richard Johnson. The lightbulb moment for Agorapocalypse came not when I was listening to the album itself. Rather I was spinning ANb’s cover of C.O.C.’s “Hungry Child” from the Bestial Machinery collection when it struck me: with the longer songs and slower tempos, ANb had just made an electro-crossover record. It was a clever move from cagey veterans who have pretty much defined extremity for grindcore for the last decade. The only thing that really held Agorapocalypse back from ruling my year was the staggering decline in the humor (though I missed the best joke on the album the first go-round). While the split with The Endless Blockade shows J. Randall’s id can be just as twistedly illuminating as ever, it seems like the band took advantage of new singer Katherine Katz and her spare X chromosome to wallow in misogynistic humor with the convenient “hey but we have a woman singer” excuse (close cousin of the “I have black friends” defense). It was an annoying step backwards from a normally stellar band, but one that feels temporary.

3. Extreme Noise Terror
Law of Retaliation

Deepsix/Osmose
Extreme Noise Terror’s latest slab o’ grindy goodness is a lot like reuniting with a beloved old friend you haven’t seen in ages. While your relationship may have warped during the years of absence and a lot of those stories are starting to blur and sound the same, there’s a convivial familiarity that glosses over those lapses. That’s what frontman Phil Vane brought to the British bastards with his return to the fold. After about a decade of wandering through the metal wilderness (what is it with British grind bands and the need to expand their horizons halfway through their careers?) Extreme Noise Terror locked and loaded more than half an hour of tooth chipping grindcore that may not quite reach their teen angst inception but recalls all those good times you used to have. Sure, your long lost college friend may crash through your coffee table and maybe he’ll miss the can when pukes in your bathroom, but it’s all cool. You’ve got history.

2. Napalm Death
Time Waits for No Slave

Century Media
Napalm Death jettisoned the annoying cameos and noodling experiments that slowly creeped back into their repertoire since signing with Century Media on 13th studio album Time Waits for No Slave, but for all that the album still felt a tad slower less vital than predecessor Smear Campaign. But that’s a relative measure because these Birmingham bastards could write a grind album that slays most comers on their way to breakfast. While Time Waits for No Slave may have dragged in spots, it still feels momentous and even transitional for a band that’s worn many masks through its various incarnations. The flashes of Amebix and even Voivod that have peeked around corners on previous albums have been given free rein on Time Waits for No Slave, the band’s most successful experiment since Fear, Emptiness, Despair. That the lineup of Greenway/Harris/Embury/Herrera, which has been together for nearly two decades, can still find ways to innovate and experiment in a field as self-restricting as grindcore is a welcome cementing of their hard earned pride of place.

1. Brutal Truth
Evolution Through Revolution

Relapse
There’s a manic, anarchic energy to Brutal Truth’s triumphant victory lap Evolution Through Revolution. It’s as though the Marx Brothers decided to record a grindcore album. It’s a sense of chaos I’ve never really associated with the New York band. For all their far flung experimenting and gallivants to musical extremes, their performance as tightly focused as though they had a need to control (see what I did there?) their surroundings. But Evolution Through Revolution brings the same anarchic body bomb assault that drummer Rich Hoax has been exorcising with Total Fucking Destruction. Don’t discount the introduction of Rochester fixture Erik Burke either. Not too many guitarists could fill Gurn’s pick hand but Burke has been bringing the weird for more than a decade first with Lethargy and then with Sulaco (with a detour to drum for Kalibas between). A pioneering press past what we previously thought was grindcore’s frontier, Evolution Through Revolution is pretty much a masterpiece from a band that’s got an album or two already worthy of the title.

Monday, March 9, 2009

G&P review: Extreme Noise Terror

Extreme Noise Terror
Law of Retaliation
Deepsix/Osmose
According to Metal Archives, 21 people have cycled through Extreme Noise Terror since 1985 (including a couple of slumming Napalm Deathers during snits with their day jobs) in a merry go round of musicians that would give Spinal Tap pause. But it was the addition one man – beloved frontman Phil Vane returned to the fold – that seems to have single handedly revived the English band with the Engrish name from its recent doldrums.
Free of the death metal malaise that came with the ill-advised swapping of vocalists with Napalm Death, these hardcore suicide bombers kickstart a holocaust in your head with a refreshing brickbat of grind on Law of Retaliation. It’s the sound of a band putting aside past differences and rediscovering the common love of acceleration that united them initially.
A searing diatribe against the ills of the world – particularly religion. By “Spit on Your Dreams,” the third song in, Vane et al take a cue from The Exorcist and advocate using a crucifix as a makeshift sex toy. While more restrained, “Religion is Fear” and “Believe What I Say” are not much kinder to worshippers’ imaginary friends.
When Vane and fellow barker Dean Jones aren’t spitting bile over the world, ENT is kicking out the jams with filthy, crusty grind that could have been recorded any time in the last 20 years.
Just as tenacious as their nation’s bulldog mascot, these grubby English gentlemen, along with countrymen Napalm Death, dispel and notion that the U.K.’s old grind guard is somehow slouching toward its dotage.