Good Reads: Two Thumbs Up

The book: Zeroville by Steve Erickson

Cinema has always haunted Steve Erickson’s best work from the stuttering movie critic protagonist of Amnesiascope (a doppelganger of the author) through the lost film masterpiece that lurks at the fringes of the narrative of Days Between Stations. But Erickson never gave himself over to the silver screen as wholly as in Zeroville, the story of film editor Vikar Jersome, who wanders into Hollywood with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor from A Place in the Sun tattooed on the side of his head. His eventual rise to cinematic prominence parallels the advent of New Hollywood and the book is filled with veiled allusions to artists such as William Friedkin, Robert Deniro and John Milius. Vikar is described as “cine-autistic” by one of the other characters. Awkward and detached in social situations, he’s prone to repeating other people’s opinions verbatim when at a loss for something to say, but Vikar is completely steeped in the glamour of Hollywood’s golden age and his journey across Los Angeles is a pilgrimage that pays homage to the city’s movie landmarks from the hotel where Clift once lived (and supposedly where D.W. Griffith haunts) to the graveyards of nascent Hollywood’s most prominent stars.True to the Hollywood spirit, it's only fitting that Erickson be the first Good Reads author to get a sequel.

A representative passage:
“Fuck continuity,” says Vikar
Silence falls over the meeting. This is the first thing that anyone in the meeting has heard Vikar say.
“The scenes of a movie,” Vikar says, “can be shot out of sequence not because it’s more convenient, but because all the scenes of a movie are really happening at the same time. No scene really leads to the next, all scenes lead to each other. No scene is really shot out of order. It’s all a false concern that a scene must anticipate another scene that follows, even if it’s not been shot yet, or that a scene must reflect a scene that precedes it, even if it’s not been shot yet, because all scenes anticipated and reflect each other. Scenes reflect what has not yet happened, scenes anticipate what has already happened.” Vikar rises from his chair. Los Angeles is the City of the Real, whose stories are as old as time, where people go to hide from God, unlike the more hopeful, childlike people of New York. “Scenes that have not yet happened,” he explains to those around the table, “have.” New York makes sense to Vikar now—as he leaves the room, everyone staring after him –in a way it never did when he was there.

A bonus representative passage:
Vikar is wholly consumed by film. That is until he’s working on a film in New York City in the late ’70s and comes across a seedy bar in the Bowery that exudes a raucous rock ‘n’ roll noise he only knows as the Sound.

It’s not just a music, rather it’s the Sound, the real Music everyone has tried to tell him over the years that all the other music was when it wasn't.
Vikar is standing on the Bowery outside what seems to be a tunnel cut into a bunker. The sidewalk is crowded with more kids like he saw in St. Marks Place, as well as old people sleeping under newspapers and drunks stumbling through the crowd asking for money. A dirty barefooted woman shivers under a yellow awning in nothing but the paper-thin gown that patients wear in hospitals.
The address on the awning is 315. There are nonsensical letters on the awning that spell nothing. A mystifying hand-written cardboard sign on the black glass doors that says
HEARTBREAKERS
MAXXI MARASCHINO
SIC FUCKS
SHIRTS
and while nothing about this is comprehensible to him, the illicitly narcotic Sound is irresistible and he goes inside, the doorman eying him with wonder.

The album: Los Angeles by Graf Orlock

Obviously, no other grind band is as equally enraptured by the power of cinema as Graf Orlock. Where other bands are content to sample bits of dialogue here and there to set off their songs, Graf Orlock are wholesale remixers who spin new stories out of repurposed dialogue and samples jailbroken from the context of their original films. Like Erickson’s Zeroville, the Los Angeles EP is their love letter not just to films but to the city that births them. It’s a tribute to the ways film reflects the glorifies the city and the way the very streets and architecture have given birth to the movies themselves, an Oroborus of influence and mutual reinforcement that just can’t happen anywhere else.

A representative song: Just listen to the whole damn thing

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.

The Feel Good Hit of the Summer

I had a mini-epiphany the other day when I was roaring down one of the local hills on my bike, doing 20 mph down the slope (that's 735 deciliters per kilojoule for your foreigners) with my headphones on and a suicidal disregard for local helmet laws. In my mind I'm one of those insane Chilean downhill bikers.

Sleep's Holy Mountain Bike*

Insect Warfare roaring in my ears, my face to the wind like a dog hanging out a car window, I realized that GODDAMN but grindcore and hardcore are fucking fun music! I know that's probably not much of a revelation to most of you, but every so often I get caught up in the grim misery that so many metal and punk bands (hilariously) try to project that I forget that this stuff is really enjoyable. It's helpful to remember the earliest Napalm Death rehearsals collapsed into giggles at the absurdity of it all.
Not everything has to be all serious and intense. In honor of that helpful reminder, here are a handful of albums that will staple gun an idiot grin on your face.

Insect Warfare
Endless Execution Through Violent Restitution
625 Thrash
2007
World Extermination is obviously a better album, but this collection of early EPs, comp appearances and leftover tracks is a more fun Insect Warfare experience. The guitars are bigger and burlier and the performances are looser than World Extermination, making it all feel more casual. I dare you not to smile during a song like "Freebase Diarrhea." Go ahead. Try it.

Graf Orlock
Destination Time Yesterday
Level Plane
2006
The first chapter of Graf Orlock's three-part '80s action film-quoting, time traveling narrative mindfuck was totally unexpected and unique when it dropped in 2006. There was absolutely nothing like it at the time. From its conception through its execution, Destination Time Today was the equivalent of a very well done, but not exactly deep action flick on cable at 3 a.m. after a hard night of drinking with friends. Graf Orlock would improve with each outing both in output and packaging (see the Alien facehugger packaging of Destination Time Tomorrow or the exemplary Doombox). But by then we knew what to expect. Not that it lessened the fun factor in the slightest.

Disfear
Misanthropic Generation
Relapse
2003
Right from the adrenal OD of kickoff "Powerload," Disfear's bouncing d-beaten hardcore is ready to play. While Discharge may have been all intense and serious, many of their wayward progeny have picked up on the fact that a skipping d-beat just naturally lends itself to an uptempo, feel good rager. Bolstered by a buzzing, electric production courtesy of Mieszko Talarczyck (who I've read was actually disappointed in its sound), Misanthropic Generation, the first Disfear album to showcase you-know-who up front, jolts you out of your chair with its freewheeling guitar leads and compels you to move.

Wormrot
Dirge
Earache
2011
My relationship with Dirge has been ... complicated. But it all clicked into place a few weeks ago when I realized I'd simply been approaching Wormrot's second album all wrong. Abuse was a brutal little nugget of a beast. My mistake was trying to box in Singapore's finest. I forgot that Wormrot are three young dudes who unexpectedly landed a deal with one of grindcore's most venerable labels. They wanted to see the world with a little cash in their pockets and just have some damn fun. And Dirge is a fun record. It's loose, blasting and was recorded in a hurry. There was no overthinking or serious sophomore slump. I still prefer Abuse, but I find myself increasingly reaching for Dirge when I just want to smile.

Unholy Grave
Grind Killers
Selfmadegod
2010
Grind Killers has very quickly become my favorite album from prolific Nagoya terrorist foes Unholy Grave. There's a spontaneity that comes from its live in the studio production that ups the fun factor substantially compared to some of their other voluminous offerings. And if that's not enough to remind you that grind is supposed to be fun, a cover of the Ramones' "Beat on the Brat" that can only be described as very ... Japanese ... underscores you're supposed to feel good when you give Grind Killers a listen.

Bad Brains
Bad Brains
ROIR
1982
I dare you to name a better hardcore record (Shane? Hmm? Ball's in your court). The Bad Brains' iconic first album was the pure essence of adrenaline captured on tape and distilled into a pure audio form. Straight from needle drop on opener "Sailin' On," Bad Brains just explode. Damn near every song is a class on uptempo pit-movers and the reggae breath-catchers are perfectly placed to build up the anticipation for ragers like "Fearless Vampire Killers" and "Pay to Cum." I and I rock for light.

Rotten Sound
Cycles
Spinefarm
2008
I would be remiss if I didn't include one of the best grind albums for biking, Rotten Sound's Cycles. Geddit, geddit? Cycles! Ha. I kill me.
But seriously, this is a fun album to ride to.




*Yes, I have a bit of a sticker obsession.

Grindcore Bracketology: The 1-8 Winners/The 3-6 Matchups

The people have spoken and it wasn’t even close. Here are your 1-8 winners.

North America
Pig Destroyer terrifier-ed crust grind lifers Phobia, blowing them out 17-4. Turns out a fairly consistent record over 20 years and an unwavering commitment to DIY ethics just can’t compete with Hull et al’s scathing art grind nightmares. (Bonus points go to Bill Willingham IV Esq. for better articulating my problem with recent Phobia albums. I also agree they’re too safe.)

Asia and Australia
In the most lopsided contest of the lot, Wormrot eviscerated Captain Cleanoff by a vote of 18-2. Though many of you argued fiercely for the Australians’ right to slot in the contest, their booze drenched nods to classic Carcass just couldn’t stand in the face of Wormrot’s exquisite ferocity.

Scandinavia
Though a few of you offered up spirited defenses of Infanticide’s new jack noise, Rotten Sound’s legacy of consistently crushing records drove them to a 16-5 victory. Give Infanticide a few more years to build up their reputation and I suspect the results would be much closer.

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Maybe it was just wishful thinking since I’ve been on an Agathocles binge lately, but I had smelled upset going into this one. You, the voters, were having none of it. Old dogs Napalm Death’s new tricks crushed Agathocles’ relentless singelmindedness by 15-6. It was the tightest contest of the day, but it wasn’t even close.

The winners have advanced and you can check out the revised brackets here.
Meanwhile, we move on to the 3-6 matchups. The faceoffs should be more evenly matched so I expect closer calls and some really interesting arguments. Let the streets flow with the blood of the unbelievers. Argument’s open until Saturday.

North America
Kill the Client (3) vs. Graf Orlock (6)
Go mess with Texas. I dare you. Yeah, didn’t think so. Kill the Client are an audio pipe bomb packed full of nails and the knucklebones of lesser competitors who shred their fingers to the nub vainly trying to keep pace. But there’s just not another band working right now that’s as purely pissed as Kill the Client. Champ Morgan is a man possessed and he’s backed by of top shelf musicians. Jesus, is there any grind band that Bryan Fajardo hasn’t joined? But the secret sauce to the Dallas barbecue may be bassist James Delgado who anchors the chaos and quietly shapes the sound from behind the scenes.
If the MPAA sends out a flurry of new cease and desist letters, cine-grinders Graf Orlock must be back in the studio. The band has dropped a triptych of releases that follow the formula of introduction/conflict/and violent conclusion that stitches together a narrative from cinematic samples and swiped dialog lyrics. And while that has been the bit of trivia that has formed the basis of the Graf’s identity, don’t overlook their quality of the hardcore tinged noise they bang out. The music is just as sweeping, emotional and explosive of the meathead movies that inspire them.

Asia and Australia
Magnicide (3) vs. Unholy Grave (6)
A fascinating matchup between two Asian acts that are perhaps better known for their artists they ape than the music they make on their own. Singapore’s Magnicide do a capable 324 impersonation as they play second grind fiddle to countrymen Wormrot. But do Wormrot have grindcore didgeridoo? Hmm? Do they? With 324 frozen in carbonite for the time being, Magnicide are your best bet to scratch that crusty grind holocaust itch until the masters’ triumphant return.
Unholy Grave are the Asian Agathocles both because they bang out a consistently lo-fi morass of punky grind with only a fleeting acquaintance with 21st Century recording techniques and technology and because the list of their split-heavy back catalogue outweighs your average phone book. But the Japanese quartet has defined its niche in the grindcore ecosphere and have burrowed in comfortably. You don’t pick up an Unholy Grave album expecting to be wowed with the latest thinking in songsmithy. However, the band has a deft hand at grinding the fuck out, never swaying from their strengths.

Scandinavia
Afgrund (3) vs. The Arson Project (6)
Some of you have had the temerity to develop your own surprisingly cogent opinions, making lucid arguments in favor of Afgrund’s superiority to Sayyadina as Sweden’s top working grinders. How dare you? Oh, I can certainly see where you’re coming from because Afgrund raged out of the abyss (all of those who got that pun, raise your hands) with a potent brew of punk- and metal-distilled audio aggression. When the sometimes Swedish/sometimes Italian/sometimes Finnish sometimes trio/sometimes quartet (OK, their lineup is not stable) clicks, the set all of Europe aflame, like the song says. The question before you is if that is strong enough to overcome the band’s insistence of larding albums with thoroughly pointless and dreary doom passages.
Against them comes upstarts The Arson Project who only boast one EP to their name to date, but it’s a corker. Hobbled by a name stolen from the bad metalcore handbook, The Arson Project have a slick hand with a tune and a poise and energy that belies the band’s relative youth. Do 14 minutes of prime noise and bucketsful of future potential stack up against the here and now attractions of Afgrund?

Continental Europe and the United Kingdom
Suffering Mind (3) vs. Attack of the Mad Axeman (6)
Suffering Mind couldn’t be more serious; Attack of the Mad Axeman couldn’t be less. Do you prefer the rage or the jester? Poles Suffering Mind are grind incarnate. Far more hardcore inflected than many of their European kin, the band blasts and huffs and doesn’t waste its time with much else. They know their strengths and they will throttle you with their raw rage and bullwhip attack.
Against them stands Germany’s Attack of the Mad Axeman the ecologically minded grinders harness the sounds of the animal kingdom in the name of animal activism and environmental responsibility. They also know their way around a thoroughly infectious riff over the course of two increasingly awesome full lengths. And yes, they wear fuzzy animal costumes on stage, but don’t let that lull you into thinking they’re a joke band.

Grind in Rewind 2009: The Envelope Please

According to existentialist icon and chain smoking gloomy gus Albert Camus, for modern man “one sentence would suffice.” Supposedly all you need to know is “he fornicated and he read newspapers.” Pretty much any of my un-/under-employed former colleagues will tell you ain’t nobody reading fucking newspapers. However, fornication is still in style. So sub out making lists for newspapers and Camus makes an easy transition into the 21st Century. No matter how arbitrary and purely subjective they may be, we are a list making species. Whatever extra terrestrial anthropologists go sifting through our nuked out debris in a few millennia surely can’t help but notice we feel a need to compulsively rank things, particularly at some arbitrary point in the planet’s annual trip around the sun that we designate as the start of a new year. In that spirit and because I will not be a slave to the cheap numerology of round numbers (or my inability to cut one band off my list), here are my 11 favorite grind albums of 2009.

11. Mumakil
Behold the Failure
Relapse
The jokes would have written themselves if Behold the Failure had sucked outright. (And you all know I can’t resist an easy joke.) But Mumakil defused that problem by crushing everything in their path. For all the faults I found with Behold the Failure – its desperately in need of some varied songwriting – there was something about Mumakil’s second album I found compelling. It left me wanting more because this Swiss band is just on the cusp of a truly explosive breakout album. While Behold the Failure may be hampered by a same-iness to the songwriting, the unrelenting brutality – one of the most visceral and violent albums released this year – easily hurdled any artistic deficiency.

10. Antigama
Warning
Relapse
I get it now. After years of not understanding why everyone raved about these slantwise Poles, Antigama met me halfway by upping the aggression on fifth album Warning. Their post modern everything but the kitchen sink-core is just as left field as before, but now the band’s wonkishness is tempered by a slavering lunge and spittle-flecked intensity lacking in some of their more prior output. Warning leaves you as drained as if you had just sat for a calculus quiz. The physicists among us could probably pen a treatise on Antigama’s use of inventive drum patters and odd sounding time signatures, but for those of us with a more literary bent, I would say this is grindcore for Pynchon aficionados.

9. Squash Bowels
Grind Virus
Willowtip
In the race to be the fast drum in the West, grindcore practitioners often lose sight of songwriting in the process. With a (relatively) slow is steady wins the race, Polish veterans Squash Bowels thrust themselves more forcefully onto the world stage with Willowtip’s backing and an arsenal tunes that recognize the groove is just as important as the grind. Comparisons to Cretin and Repulsion are obvious and are in no way pejorative. Grind Virus is a virulent, catching collection of absurdist body horror and cretanic grotesquerie. Don’t expect shattered land speed records. Do expect to giggle until you shit yourself. I think that’s the point.

8. Graf Orlock
Destination Time Today
Adagio 830
The John Williamses of grindcore completed the third and final chapter of their twisty time traveler paradox audio action film (if listen to all three chapters in a row – admittedly difficult since volume three is vinyl only for now – pay attention to the stolen lyrical conceits, think about it way too hard – possibly with medicinal aids – a plot does begin to almost emerge) with all the triumphant bombast you expect from a popcorn action flick’s third act. Our heroes load up on weapons (“Run Over by a Truck”) and get righteously pissed (“An Interest in Prosthetics”) before peaceably settling their disputes with the antagonist. I kid. Everyone dies in a hail of bullets. What keeps Graf Orlock from being just another one-trick goof is the fact that the songs are damn good, and Destination Time Today features some of the best and most emotionally resonant sequences in the band’s catalogue.

7. Rehumanize
Resident Apostasy
Open Grave
Christian music is so easy to mock. At least it was until Rehumanize brutalized my ear drums and my soul (if such exists). Rehumanize’s grindcore of mass conversion is just as blunt and unrelenting as their missionary work. For all their self righteous proselytizing (there’s a come to Jeebus diatribe in the liner notes that has to be read to be believed) and intrusive, fat fingered samples of oh so earnest ministers, these guys are keenly aware of what makes grind work and they deftly work it into half an hour of apocalyptic grind. God is coming back, they say, and boy is he pissed.

6. Magrudergrind
Magrudergrind
Willowtip
Probably the most debated and discussed grind record of 2009, Magrudergrind’s self-titled Willowtip debut may have polarized for its cleaner production and sleeker attack, but taken on its own, the album was a scorcher of stripped back grind and flashes of goofy humor. But there was also a vicious soul to the mayhem as well. “Martyrs of the Shoah” is probably the most affecting piece of grind I’ve ever heard and the band’s sense of outrage at local injustices comes off as sincere and not rehashing of shopworn clichés. This is a band that wants to fight for your right to party and live in decent housing and make a liveable wage. It’s a potent combination driving one of the better performances of 2009.

5. Attack of the Mad Axeman
Scumdogs of the Forest
Scrotum Jus
I don’t know if they’re nihilists, but German grindcore furries Attack of the Mad Axeman bring a Lebowskian sense of the absurd to the genre with second album, Scumdogs of the Forest. Aping the already self-referential Gwar and picking fights with Glen Benton, Axeman don’t gore your sacred cow so much as make sure you’re treating properly, getting it regular vet checkups and making it comfortable while it lives out its days in comfort and you dine on cold tofu. Not the most obvious scheme to win friends and influence people, but their absurdist brand of performance art – complete with risible animal costumes – is damn effective. Oh, and they grind like motherfuckers while they do it.

4. Blood I Bleed
Gods Out of Monsters
SelfmadeGod
You know that scene in A Better Tomorrow where Chow Yun-Fat walks into a room and artistically guns down every motherfucker in sight? Yeah, that’s what Gods Out of Monsters sounds like. Pure shrapnel; nobody gets out alive, and you just might walk away crippled like Mark Gor. Wielding a guitar strung with concertina wire, Shantia is easily one of the top five songwriters working in grind right now. Each track on Gods Out of Monsters, despite its all fast all the time missions statement, is distinct and bears his signature feedback-rodeoing stamp. With a supporting cast that’s just as single-minded, Blood I Bleed are poised to be a thoroughly dominating grindcore fixture for many years to come.

3. Afgrund
Vid Helvetets Grindar
Willowtip
Swedish powerhouse Afgrund kick off their second album predicting that Europe will burn in the future. I’m not here to dispute these digital Nostrodomi or their precognitive abilities. What I do know is that they’ve been setting most of the grind loving globe on fire right here in the present with Vid Helvetets Grindar. Everything they hinted at with Svarta Dagar gets refined, carefully edited and reduced to a lambent core of plasma intensity. While a pair of forays into sludge and stoner swing are, to be charitable … ungood, that’s a minor misstep for a band that’s the grind equivalent of a time traveling, plutonium powered DeLorean. It’s 1.21 gigawatts of blastbeaten goodness. You know you want one.

2. Parlamentarisk Sodomi
De Anarkistiske An(n)aler
625 Thrash
Nobody has been as consistently awesome the last two years as Parlamentarisk Sodomi’s Papirmollen. His one man crusade against Norway’s reigning power structure tripped the fuse on three homemade bricks of C4 to date, sending blastbeaten and dildo-shaped shrapnel flying toward every unprotected orifice. Latest long player De Anarkistiske An(n)aler finds him devising ever more intricate death traps as though he were Jigsaw in a parallel universe where the Saw films didn’t suck. He’s a moral terrorist, Papirmollen, and he wants to his targets to stew over the life choices that may have brought them to this impasse in their lives before he delivers the killing blow (say, in the shape of 11 minute epic “Klaebukranikene (de Anarkistiske An(n)aler)”). While not as visceral as Har Du Sagt "A" Får Du Si "Nal,” De Anarkistiske An(n)aler is a bold – and overwhelmingly successful – statement from a grindcore visionary.

1. Wormrot
Abuse
Scrotum Jus

Lo! ’tis a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly –
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Woe!

That motley drama – oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! – it writhes! – with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.

Out – out are the lights – out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy called “Man,”
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

Edgar Allen Poe
“The Conqueror Worm”
1845

There is absolutely nothing I can add to what Atanamar, 206-Grind and Zmaj (especially Zmaj) have already said so much better. All hail the Conqueror Worm.

G&P Review: Graf Orlock

Graf Orlock

Destination Time Today

Adagio 830

For years now a friend and I have been playing fantasy film league dream casting while meticulously plotting what we think would be the ultimate gangster/heist film. It’s an ideal lineup anchored by Harvey Keitel, James Woods, Christopher Walken, Joe Pantoliano and Steve Buscemi; Jean Reno would be paired with the arbiter of French cool Alain Delon; of course noble bloodshed staples Chow Yun-Fat and Andy Lau would have roles; ditto with the tripartite titans of Yakuza films Riki Takeuchi, Sho Aikawa and Takeshi Kitano. Alex Cox, David Cronenberg and Jim Jarmusch would all get cameos as stylized angels of body horror death. Forest Whitaker and Lawrence Fishbourne would both be sent to fat camp and whipped into shape for their roles. Michael Caine and Bob Hoskins would lord over the British contingent as Limey godfathers to new jacks such as Clive Owen and Thomas Hardy. And just to prove we can out-Tarantino Mr. Quentin in the resurrecting-under-appreciated-actors shtick, we’ve got a lovingly crafted role for Sy Richardson, who was pretty much the prototype for Sam Jackson during those bleak years between the death of Blaxploitation and the advent of Jules Winnfield.

We’re currently putting out calls to Abel Ferrara, Nicolas Winding Refn, Chan-Wook Park, and Michael Haneke for their directorial take.

That much we agree on. What I haven’t convinced him of just yet is hiring Graf Orlock to soundtrack it all, but I think the sweeping cinematics of Destination Time Today just may sway him. The conclusion to the Californian copylefters’ sample-swiping time travel revenge/assassination trilogy of grindular goodness. As always, the riffs are meaty and mean and the vocals are a pass the mic grab bag of ’80s and ’90s shooters and scifi dialogue (Terry Gilliam’s time travel paradox 12 Monkeys gets liberally quoted) repurposed and larded with nods to the film school drop outs’ favorite films. Sure it's not as grindy as its predecessors (like Star Wars, I think we can all agree the second installment was the finest) but it's a damn sight better than "Eye of the Tiger."

But befitting its place in the narrative when our cinematic hero would get all badass on a slew of ill-starred underlings or when our survivor girl would stop running and pick up an axe, Destination Time Today takes on a truly triumphant tone with “An Interest in Prosthetics,” the last song on the first side. It’s shot through with a blistering trumpet call riff that almost hearkens back to call in the infantry cowboy pictures of yore. Flip the platter and the B side starts with the deadly serious “Deluxe Mental Hospital Tour,” presaging the bullet riddled bloodbath that we all know is inevitable. Of course the crisis is averted, the hero gets the girl and the bad guy takes a well earned dirt nap for his efforts. Like the films on which Graf Orlock have based their career, it’s not the destination that counts – whether it’s tomorrow, yesterday or today – it’s the journey that’s important. I’ve already booked my tickets for wherever Graf Orlock care to venture next because this is sure fire Oscar contender this year.

Grind in Rewind 2007

The end of the year countdown list is an institution every bit as sacred as the one second song. So we humbly plowed through the ridiculously tall stack of crap we bought this year to sift out the five best records of 2007.
We look back on 2007 as a year of that presaged the advent of acoustic grind, the continued dominance of the Swedes and cinematic beatdowns, leaving us with the distinct sensation of insects burrowing under our skin. And we liked it.

5. The Locust
New Erections
Epitaph
One for the message board haters.
The worlds have warred, our new insect overlords have pillaged and gone and The Locust drone Justin Pearson is left to wonder whether there is any point in rebuilding. New Erections' 23 minutes are laced with enough paranoia and dystopia to fuel the second coming of Phillip K. Dick.
Returning from the meandering wtf moment that was 2005’s Safety Second, Body Last, The Locust have inched upped the bpm quotient once again but haven’t forgotten the lessons of slightly longer songs with a few slower moments tossed in to create their most dynamic and expansive record to date.
Alex Newport, in his third outing as the band’s producer, wrings a tight performance out of the spastic crew in rubber bug suits. The songs careen from blastbeat fueled freakouts laced with their trademark keyboard squonk to slowly blipping bits of frazzled computer sludge. The longer songs give Pearson a more expansive palette upon which to expound his post-apocalypse now meanderings.
Almost no band has been as divisive in their career as The Locust and New Erections won’t be winning any converts/defectors from either camp, but for those with a taste for the adventurous, the hardcore arthropods have swarmed back with their finest outing.

4. Graf Orlock
Destination Time Tomorrow
Level Plane
Load up Hot Fuzz on mute and fire off this burning little EP. These marauding cinophiles make a better soundtrack for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s hilarious action film send up than even Robert Rodriguez’s climactic score.
Bad action movie samples abound, more bad action movie dialog serves in lieu of lyrics and it’s all soldered together with well executed Pig Destroyer-ish grind and a soupcon of '80s thrash.
But let’s be honest here, one of the reasons this EP made the cut is because of the absolutely stunning artwork. Instead of a jewel case, the CD is lovingly cradled by face hugger from the Alien series and wrapped in a “Uline state shield bag” that warns “Handling requires caution.” It’s the best packaging gag since HeWhoCorrupts packed the Microeconomics album in a wallet complete with credit cards and an itemized business lunch receipt.

3. Sayyadina
Mourning the Unknown
Sound Pollution
Yes Sayyadina are Swedish. Yes they sound a little like Nasum. No that doesn’t mean Mieszko Talarcyk is coming back.
But in a countdown full of contenders playing fast and loose with grind’s established ground rules, we take a moment to remind everyone that when executed well with slashing production and catchy songs, there’s nothing wrong with tradition.
Bringing in some of the hardcore vibe from his side project, Victims, Andreas Ericksson leads his cohorts through 21 tracks of rampaging grind on Mourning the Unknown that delve deep into the band’s psyche without having to bring in a shrink. They tackle isolation, loneliness and depression in a satisfyingly non-emo way.
Eriksson’s production gives the songs a heft and a bite, letting each instrument stake out its spot on the killing floor. Jon Linqvist’s high/low vocal tradeoffs with Eriksson also give each song a dynamism and personality.
Sayyadina have certainly studied at the feet of Nasum (Eriksson played bass on Shift), and the trio has absorbed those lessons well. They are on the verge of creating their own space in the crowded Swedish grind scene and are definitely a band to watch moving forward.

2. Total Fucking Destruction
Zen and the Art of Total Fucking Destruction
Translation Loss
I know it’s only acoustic grind, but I like it.
No we had never heard of it prior to 2007 either, but that’s just part of what makes Rich Hoak a metal visionary.
The former Brutal Truth drum basher and his crack A-Team were back on their second outing in 2007, a three part performance art soap opera that defied everyone’s expectations.
On Zen and the Art... TFD unleashed 10 new tracks of stream of consciousness grind, particularly standouts “Mad Pig Disease” and “We are all Elvis Now.” As a bonus the multimedia disc also includes footage of a 10-song live set showing the band in their natural habitat. But it’s the four song acoustic diversion bookended by those two sections that surely had many a grindcore tongue wagging this year.
The subdued take on TFD standards “Kill the Jocks and Eat their Brains” and “Bio-Satanic Terrorist Attack” give those songs a new depth and texture beyond the original versions.
For a band that has posited itself as cultural terrorists, they deftly pulled off a unexpected bit of musical legerdemain and subverted grindcore itself.


In any other year, that accomplishment would have warranted top of the list honors, but as Connor MacLeod knows all too well, there can be only one… (I know that would have been a slightly less lame reference had Graf Orlock been just a teensy bit better.) But keep reading....