At Cold War With Grindcore

 

Scoff they who lack the illumination to see the machinations behind the facade of the 21st Century. For those accustomed to piecing together disparate signs and portents, they elucidate the true powers that manipulate our lives like pawns. In place of bread and circuses our shadowy despots gave us pre-packaged rebellion and soporific entertainments meant to lull all who questioned the construct we call reality. While we feared their efforts to immanentize the eschaton, the Earth's true masters had discovered the ultimate transcendental armament: they had weaponized grindcore. Draw near and see the auguries revealed.

Let's Play Operation



In 1961 the CIA attempted to infiltrate Singapore's secret police (hilarity ensued). The Southeast Asian nation decided to bide its time for nearly 50 years, retaliating in 2009 by enslaving the globe's gullible grind-loving children through a clever counter attack dubbed "Operation Grindcore." The vessel for this retaliatory strike was a three man commando team of subliminal musical specialists dubbed Wormrot. In less than 30 seconds, Singapore brought the right thinking grind world to its knees with its initial tactical strike.

Hash it Out



Singapore's unexpected surge for global domination was remarkably successful because first world grindcore audiences has been lulled into a pharmacological coma that left them helpless against Southeast Asia's most wicked riffs. Population Reduction lamented this indolence in their portrait of the strung out, incoherent grind masses with "Hash Smoking Grind Freaks." Befuddled by the rallying cry of "smoke, grind, sleep," Europe and North America had grown complacent, unprepared for the attack.

War is Hell... of a Good Time



The United States had actually gotten wind of Singapore's dastardly plans a few years in advance and attempted to develop appropriate counter measures.  Fearing for the very survival of American grind, the nation's finest engineers (the good kind; not these assholes) gathered together along the Gulf Coast for the blastbeaten equivalent of the Manhattan Project. Because Wormrot's riffs buzzed like subliminal wasps, the United States' retaliation was known as Insect Warfare. Despite their best intentions, the researchers feared grindcore had been irrevocably infected with Wormrot's awesomeness. The only answer was to burn it all down. They declared they were "At War With Grindcore."

If You Build It, They Will Grind



What these scientists and assorted eggheads quickly realized is that no organic drummer could stand in the face of Fitri's insane thumping. From a dark corner of the DARPA budget government spooks are loath to even acknowledge exists came Agoraphobic Nosebleed and "Built to Grind," 22 seconds of digitized terminator noise that would stand as the United States' last hope. Some men are born to grind, others have grind thrust upon them, but motherfucking Agoraphobic Nosebleed were built to grind. Now go have sex with Jesus Christ, you faggot.

Sixth Extinction



The clandestine grindcore skirmish between Singapore and the United States eventually left the globe a charred cinder set upon by roving gangs of blastbeat bandits in jerry rigged cars and football pads. The last men standing at the end of the universe, Gripe said farewell to all that came before with their lamenting "Grind into Extinction." It's the end of the world as we know. Nobody feels fine now.

You Grind...But Why?: Population Reduction

The time has come to wind this series down for at least a little bit, and I can think of no better way to send it in to the great beyond than with one of the smartest guys to ever play retarded metal.

Everybody's got "that album." That one that you blew off for a number of years but would eventually totally change the course of your musical life. Mine was Repulsion. I was completely late to the Horrified party, blowing it off as just another lame gore record (despite being all about Reek of Putrefaction, figure that one out). It was discovering "that album" that set Justin "Dr. X" Green on the true path of grind, culminating in thrashazoid weirdos Population Reduction.


"I got into grind from the death metal side of things as opposed to the punk side," Green said. "I had been into death metal for years and was looking for something different around 1997/1998, when death metal was starting to be all about ultra-technicality and sterility. My favorite death metal bands were more in the early Entombed/Autopsy vein, and I wasn't hearing that sound in the death metal scene anymore. I knew what I was looking for, but I didn't know what it was called- I even asked this one punk kid in my high school, 'Is there a death metal band that kinda plays like Helmet, with no solos and just riffs?', and he replied, 'I dunno... maybe Terrorizer?' I saw the CD at a record store but didn't buy it because Pete Sandoval's hair was too big on the back photo and I thought it was going to be Thrash. (!!) When I heard that Terrorizer record years later, I knew that was the exact sound that I'd been looking for. Stripped down, fast, tight, and with really catchy, memorable riffs. I still wonder how my life would have been different if I'd bought that record at age 16 instead of 22. I would have gotten into punk a lot sooner for sure. What I figured out years later was that my favorite death metal bands were the ones that had the most punk influences, so when I started listening to the more punk-influenced grind, everything just set into place for me.
"To me, grind is like death metal with all the fat trimmed off. It was kind of like taking the best parts (mosh parts, blast beats, thrash beats, d-beats) of my favorite death metal songs and putting them all in the same short song. When you're playing a 5-minute-plus death metal song, it's ok to have longer transitional passages or put in some filler-type riffs here or there, but with grind you have to get the most out of every riff in the shortest amount of time. Instead of writing one good riff and then thinking, 'Ok, I'll build the song around that', you have to think, 'Ok, I've got one good riff. Now I need about 3 more really awesome riffs and I'll start arranging the song.' Grind to me is 'more killer, less filler.'
"Also, when I started getting into grind and then crust I really appreciated the difference in lyrical content. I'd never really been 'politically active' but had a lot of very strong opinions about things, and was always really let down by the sexism and the posturing of the metal scene, and the sort of 'jock' attitudes and lack of intelligence that I saw. With grind and crust there were finally some bands that were saying things about the world I actually agreed with. When I read the lyrics to Dystopia's Human=Garbage record I knew I had found a scene with kindred spirits!
"In addition to playing drums, I also play guitar, but I'm not great. I can't solo and never have had any interest, which is probably why grindcore appealed to me so much. It's death metal played by punks! And everyone knows that punks don't take guitar lessons... so basically I realized I could continue to write grind riffs for all eternity with the fairly limited guitar vocabulary that I have, and that's what I've been doing."

Art Fucking Sucks (But Population Reduction Doesn't)

For all my cranky bitching, the friends with benefits relationship between grindcore and movies has been fairly productive. Whether it’s Graf Orlock’s artsy fartsy, copyfighting deconstruction of shoot em up trifles as modern mythology texts or garage goofs who just want to write a tune about their favorite flicks, movies —used properly – provide a shorthand for conveying themes, philosophical exploration and emotional depth. Or some movies are just really cool and deserve songs.
“Oh yeah, movies are a huge influence on this band,” Population Reduction drummer Justin “Dr. X” Green said. “Countless ideas for songs of ours have been directly or indirectly inspired by all the crap we like to watch. I wouldn't say they influence the music at all, but lyrically, we need all the help we can get and stealing ideas from other people's hard work just seems like the sporting thing to do! But yeah, sometimes it's a line in a movie, or a scene, or just the whole damn thing that we cannibalize. “
Population Reduction’s dynamic duo of Green and Ben (aka Peter Svoboda) marry a contemporary take on thrash with a movie collection that’s just as old as Ride the Lightning. If it’s low brow and high body count, chances are it might pop up in a Population Reduction tune some day.
“There are dozens upon dozens of things that we've filed away over time under the ‘This would make a fucking awesome sample’ label,” Ben said. “... We always write the music first, and lyrics second, but outside of that there's nothing resembling rhyme or reason. What I can say for sure is that we are both Corman fans, and the only movie that had more than one sample taken from it is Predator 2. I don't know what that says about us, but it's probably unflattering.”
“I love watching obscure low-budget 70s and 80s horror films and those are a gold mine for samples,” Green added. “I guess maybe our affinity for those kinds of movies comes from the fact that they, like our music, were a labor of love, have gone unnoticed or appreciated by most, and were characterized by a lack of monetary resources and a complete disregard of good taste.”
Their won perceived lack of good taste may be a reflection of the duo’s fractious relationship with art, as reflected by the songs “Art Fucking Sucks” and “Plague of the Artists.” Or something. Because they didn’t remember tackling art as relentlessly as they’ve opined on weed and zombies.
“Do we have more than one song about art?” Ben asked (possibly rhetorically, email is brutal to verbal irony). “Man, that memory loss shit is fucking real! Seriously though, art killed my father. Well, they hurt him real bad. Hurt his feelings, mostly.”
“Yeah, I don't recall having another anti-art song either,” Green said. “Actually, we're just jealous of those people who actually have artistic talent since Ben and I both still draw at about a 4th grade level: stick figures all the way. We know a lot of amazingly talented artists but that song isn't about them. It's about the people that have no artistic talent that think they are artists. A lot of the abstract art I've seen around the bay area could have been done by an 8-year old (or Ben and I) but is invariably posted next to a page long essay about how meaningful the painting actually is. It seems like as long as you can drop the correct art-world "buzz words", then you're in. So it's not an anti-art song, it's just anti-art-that-sucks.”
Population Reduction’s art (a term I’m sure will make them squirm) does not suck. In fact, it’s anti-suck. Unlike their contemporaries, Population Reduction are still riding the power of the riff while maintaining the blastbeaten intensity. And Ben also shares his riffs with thrash-violence outfit Voetsek, with whom he moonlights.
“It seems to be there's a difference between riffs that he writes for Voetsek and the ones for Population Reduction,” Green said. “To me, anything that sounds like it could have been a Megadeth riff goes to Voetsek whereas we keep all the Metallica riffs. Circa 1986 of course. I dunno, some riffs just sound like us. There's really only been one time where I heard Ben play a riff and was like ‘damn, I really wanted to play that!.’ Most of the time it's pretty clear which band a riff ‘belongs’ to.”
While Population Reduction’s relative profile has gotten a boost in the last 18 months from a (relatively) high profile split with death metal lifers Abscess and a well deserved slot on This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 2, they’re in no danger of displacing Jay-Z from his bitches, hos and Cristal lifestyle just yet.
“Not so much, but we've really only been playing local shows recently,” Green said. “We're hoping to see a difference from the last time we toured when we hopefully hit the road in the spring or summer this year. The comp really was a great opportunity for us and hopefully exposed us to a lot of people (which is great since we can't actually expose ourselves to them; that would be illegal).”

Smoke, Grind, Sleep: Why Blastbeats and Bongs Are Best Buds

Wait…
…*pfffft*…
…what, man?
Admittedly, I am probably the worst person to even be asking this question because I know where Dave is, I don’t collect indigenous art and I’ve never seen my fingers go fing. What I’m trying to say is marijuana just holds no appeal for me, but I get its utility, especially if you’re jamming out super slooooooooow doooooooooooooom sooooooooooooooooongs. But I’ve always been fascinated by grind bands who have associated themselves with copious weed consumption. Given the drug’s effects include loss of focus and lack of coordination, it just always seemed an odd fit for a musical genre that demands speed and precision.
But maybe, given my limited experience, I’ve just been thinking about this all wrong.
“You have to relax to play. If I have too much coffee sometimes I can’t play,” drug crazed grindfreak Rich Hoak of Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction said (half joking about the coffee thing).

Hash Smoking Grind Freaks

For all my misconceptions, grinders whose bands lay the weed imagery on thick as high grade resin, say marijuana definitely has a place in the creative process and when performing – especially drummers.“Drinking alcohol severely affects my drumming ability and makes my playing turn to absolute slop, even after only one beer or so,” Justin “Dr. X” Green, drummer for Population Reduction, said. “Ben [aka guitarist Peter Svoboda] and I have found that before a show, it's best if he doesn't smoke and I don't drink. If I drink, I can't physically play the songs. If Ben smokes, he can play but can't remember how the songs go. Weed doesn't affect my ability to play fast, but it increases the chances of forgetting where in the song I am if I get too ‘into’ a certain part or section. So I've found that moderation is really pretty key in using weed for its beneficial effects. If I get too stoned, then I'll play like shit, but light or moderate use can really help focus me and actually gives me energy before we play.”
Hoak and Green both said just the right application of THC allows them to relax, hitting what Hoak describes as a zen zone where muscle memory takes hold and he’s not so much consciously thinking about what he’s playing as flowing with the music.
“Things go by really fast,” Hoak said. To the point where he has to keep a set list at hand to mark his place in the music on occasion.
Beyond limbering up his performances, Green also said a good smoke helps him appreciate the music more, heightening his sensory perceptions.
“Another thing that weed has over alcohol for me is that it really makes the ‘texture’ and layers of music more apparent,” he said. “Certain riffs or distortion can sound or ‘feel’ like slabs of concrete, complete with microscopic grit. Maybe I just have a slight form of synesthesia, I don't know.”

Kill For Weed

Heeding Denis Leary’s admonition that “marijuana leads to fucking carpentry,” I can’t help but notice that plenty of bands that associate heavily with weed – Brutal Truth, Exit-13, Total Fucking Destruction and Cephalic Carnage – tend to take a more expansive view of grind’s potential. Not content with 90 seconds of blastbeaten fury, they sprinkle in free jazz and world music like seeds in a dime bag.
“Depends on what strain of weed you smoke! If you smoke some cherry lemon skunk you will be dooming out like Catheter, if you smoke pineapple or cheese you might be playing in a free form jazzy mood, if you smoke some piece maker you'll be grinding like Noiseear, smoke the new strain in Colorado called Cephalic’s Carnage you will not only be a little country you will also be rock n roll,” Cephalic Carnage’s Lenzig Leal said.
And Leal should know his shit. This is a band who had a dancing marijuana bush join them on stage at Maryland Death Fest for a rendition of “Kill for Weed.”“Brutal Truth party but we don’t have the connections to drug lords with truckloads of drugs like [the guys in Cephalic Carnage] do,” Hoak said.
As to the musical vistas sparked by blazing up, Hoak essentially invokes the scientific adage that correlation does not equal causation. He said the kind of people who are attracted to the weed lifestyle may already be self-selecting for more experimental strains of music.
“All the same sort of people have this same sort of attitude,” he said. “These are the people most attracted to smoking up and these would be the same people who would be more open to counterintuitive to the norm kind of music.”
Even for those who prefer their grindcore to adhere to more traditional conventions, marijuana can open up the doors of perception.
“Outside of playing live, I pretty much always write new material after smoking,” Green said. “Usually when I first smoke, within a couple minutes, grind riffs just start playing in my head, complete with drums and everything and there's all these new ideas to work with. For me though, the ‘instant creativity’ effect only works if it's the first smoke of the day, and only if I don't over-do it. If I've been smoking weed all day with friends and I come back to the house to write music, another bowl is just going to make me tired. So for me, taking one nice big hit in the afternoon gives me a bunch of energy and a lot of musical ideas (if I can remember them) but the more you smoke, the more tired and burnt-out you get throughout the day.”

Don’t Spare the Green Love

And maybe I’m just overthinking this because at the end of the day, a few bong rips can just be a bit of social lubricant.
“My drug use … had just been social use, what with it being such a good time getting together with the rest of the band and doing vocals, on those rare occasions when I'm in the same room with everybody,” Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s Richard Johnson said.
Hoak said weed became the lingua franca for Brutal Truth and New York institution Disassociate (who had a logo called Splifford ferfuckssake) back when the young bands split a rehearsal space.
“We would cross paths with them and smoke out as one band came in and one band came out,” he said.
“It varies from band to band, some cats like to smoke a few bowls before they play so they can all be on the same mental wavelength, some folk for extreme concentration and relaxation, some to block out the crowd, others for writers block or inspiration, but for Cephalic it’s just to be recreationally stoned, just for the fun of it,” Leal said.

Dopesmoker

Can’t get enough hash smoking grind freaks? Proceed the following weedians to grindcore Nazareth.
Enjoy.

1. Bastards – “Bong Rips”
2. Population Reduction – “Hash Smoking Grind Freaks”
3. Mindflair – “Green Bakery”
4. Total Fucking Destruction – “Grindfreak Railroad”
5. Cephalic Carnage – “Kill For Weed”
6. Brutal Truth – “Jemenez Cricket (Drug Crazed Grind Freaks version)
7. Exit-13 – “Legalize Hemp Now”
8. Disassociate – “Ice Bong”
9. Agoraphobic Nosebleed – “Bong Hit Wonder”

G&P Review: Abscess/Population Reduction

Abscess/Population Reduction
Split
Tank Crimes
Heretical confession time.
Most of what’s considered classic American death metal – the shit I supposedly grew up with – bores the ever living fuck out of me. Morbid Angel can’t hold my attention (but I love Vader, so figure that one out). I listened to Cause of Death for the first time in about a decade the other day and once was pretty much enough to remind me why I sold my copy years ago. Death’s wankery bores me to tears (and I hate, Hate, HATE Chuck Schuldiner’s voice). Deicide, beyond pointing and laughing, does nothing for me. Ditto Cannibal Corpse.
The exception that always proved that rule was Autopsy, whose doomy deathy creepy crawly goodness on Mental Funeral ranks right up there with Winter for me as landmark “whoa, wait, WTF?” albums that turned me on to doom. So it’s kind of a surprise to me that I hadn’t bothered to check out Chris Reifert et al’s post-Autopsy scum punk project Abscess until now when they’ve called it quits.
Maybe I wouldn’t have waited so long if somebody had told me Abscess sorta sound like dearly departed Texan weirdoes Dead Horse (anybody remember them?). But here they are on this old-meets-new split from last year with the similarly demented Population Reduction. It’s a nice match because both bands seem to make a career out of being bizarrely provocative without devolving into cheap and tired gore tirades. Abscess queasily bookend their half of the split with “Nausea Without End” and an out of left field cover of the Pepto Bismol jingle. Everything between is just beer drenched insanity.

Abscess – “The World Insane”

As for Population Reduction, their resin-caked thrash/grind amalgam snaps, crackles and pops as they launch hilariously titled diatribes your way on “Babies are Assholes” and “Art Fucking Sucks.”

Population Reduction – “In With the Old, Out With the Cold”

Quirky, demented and listenable. That’s all I really ask.

[Full disclosure: Population Reduction kindly provided me with a review copy.]

The Jester Race

We all know metal is SRS BZNESS otherwise it wouldn’t be filled with endless photos of identical bands in identical black shirts making identical SRS faces at the camera. Oooh, scary.
Sometimes I just feel like telling the entire metal community to “lighten up, Francis.” Punk and metal are supposed to be fun, dammit, but it seems like only grindcore remembers how to crack a goddamned smile anymore. Despite the lingering influence of the No Fun Club, even fastcore punks and power violence nerds have been spotted sporting the occasional goofy grin.
If the Dead Kennedys taught me nothing else in my life, it’s that sometimes ridicule can be the most effective form of protest. The powers that be, from your local scene queen douche at a basement show straight up through the big Jehovah himself, hate being mocked. So with that in mind, I pulled together a collection of songs whose titles never fail to make me giggle. This is in no way an indication of how good the songs themselves are. It’s merely a representation of my bent sense of humor.
Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments as well.
Enjoy.

Population Reduction – “Yuppie Assault Vehicle”
Voetsek – “WWLD [What Would Lemmy Do?]”
Squash Bowels – “Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Ass”
Spoonful of Vicodin – “My Idea of Anarchy is Taking a Shit on Company Time”
Guyana Punch Line – “Home Fucking is Killing Prostitution”
Psycho – “Carnation Instant Death”
Total Fucking Destruction – “Seth Putnam is Wrong About a Lot of Things, But Seth Putnam is Right About You” [ed.: best song title evAR.]
Anal Cunt – “Our Band is Wicked Sick (We Have the Flu)”
xBrainiax – “Lenny Kravitz is His Answer”
Spazz – “The One With a Goat has an Orgy Up His Sleeve”

G&P review: Population Reduction

Population Reduction
Each Birth a New Disaster
Tank Crimes
I want to send Population Reduction’s Peter Svoboda and Dr. X a care package filled with Milwaukee’s Finest and a couple ounces of weed just for penning the ditty “Black Metal Beach Party.”
I’m hard pressed to think of a better way to deflate the oh-so-grim Nordic mopes than to imagine them briefly leaving their troll-ridden forest murk to play volleyball in spike gauntlets or go swimming in corpse paint.
Aside from the well played swipe at the korpsepaint kommandos, Each Birth a New Disaster deftly weaves Cretin’s grotesque aesthetic with the thrashy grind of Pig Destroyer circa Terrifyer or a less spastic Bodies in the Gears of the Apparatus. Population Reduction stripmines Fark headlines (“Road-age at the Farmers Market”), bad horror films (“Taking Bong Rips in the Tombs of the Blind Dead”), cheap beer (“Return of the Beast”) and the just plain ridiculous (“Amish Meth Dealer”) into a ribald collection of up tempo absurdist art.
Though the songs may not be as catchy as Cretin or as scathing as Pig Destroyer, Population Reduction’s latest is an exponential improvement in both sound quality and song writing over their muddy sounding previous effort, At the Throats of Man Forever. The thrash swing that infects Each Birth’s 15 tracks gives Svoboda’s chugga-chugga riffs the space they need to breathe, and dude knows his way around slinging a tasty guitar line. A two man operation leaves little room for slack and Dr. X does not disappoint, channeling a pre-suck Lars Ulrich to start a tune and incarnating Pete Sandoval by the time the 90 second song ends. Throw in some hoarse thrash barking and some early Carcass guttural grunts and you’re left with an all around enjoyable album that manages to rage with a well earned smile on its face.
If you need to fix your Cretin jones while newly engendered frontwoman Marissa Martinez adjusts to her new life in heels, Population Reduction can ably fill the grindcore grotesquerie gap.