Devil’s Horns: Exploring Grindcore’s Ongoing Fascination With the Saxophone

“And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep.”— H.P. Lovecraft, “Nyarlathotep”

It’s time we talk about grindcore’s dirty secret.
For 30 years—literally from the very first moment—grind musicians have been cheating on you with the must un-metal of instruments: the saxophone. (Yes, I know, literally, that's it made out of metal. You know what I mean, smart ass!)
Saxophone is that instrument your parents tried to foist on you when they misunderstood what exactly you meant when you told them you wanted to join a band. It’s probably not the instrument you picture yourself shredding on a stage in front of throngs of panty-throwing fans.

Ladies.

However, it’s probably got more of a grindcore pedigree than you’d credit it at first blush. Its reedy wail has been adding an extra frisson to the wonted arsenal of slashing guitars and thumping drums for decades. If nothing else, dabbling in odd instrumentation will probably get you street cred as a serious musician who’s not afraid to test barriers. Also expect lazy reviewers to drop the term “jazzy” a lot when describing your song.
“Any band with a saxophone that doesn't play ska will eventually be described as jazz,” Dead Neanderthals saxophonist Otto said. “I'm really not into traditional jazz but love free jazz. Maybe we're a little jazz in that sense.”
Saxophone grind is still a bit of a novelty, and I’m certainly not advocating making it a full time thing, but maybe it’s time we recognize it’s not as incongruous as it sounds at first blush.

A Bastard Noise: Power Violence Lives on in a New Generation

“No Comment! Manpig! Capitalist Casualties! Man is the Bastard! West Coast Power Violence! Let’s fucking go! Kick ass!”
And with that, the term power violence entered the hardcore lexicon. The loose confederation of California bands had little in common stylistically beyond a penchant for brevity. They certainly didn’t set out to spark a musical revolution. But 20 years after Man is the Bastard shouted the term into existence, a host of up and coming bands are taking what was once an inside joke to brand outcasts in the California hardcore scene and turning it into an ongoing and constantly evolving musical movement of its own.
Though the term power violence has been “commodified and bastardized” in the two decades since its introduction, Robby Komen of Sea of Shit still sees the spirit of that first run of bands in the wave of contemporary practitioners.
“It was definitely a time/era specific thing in its original incarnation (just like anything, it has to start somewhere), but I do believe there are contemporaries that earnestly share the same ethos and ideologies that unified these bands in the past,” Komen said.
Attracted by power violence’s aggression and malleability, a modern wave of neoviolence bands are taking short shocks of hardcore festooned with prominent bass and exploring all of the possible permutations, keeping it from going stale and extinct. Sprawling across the globe and adapting to fit new musical ecosystems, power violence is more vibrant and fertile than Man is the Bastard and their cohorts ever could have imagined.

Grind in Rewind 2012: It Takes Two to Tango

The split seems to be a lost art in the digital era. Downloading two different halves of an album from two different Bandcamp pages just doesn't quite have the same pizzazz as flipping a piece of wax on your turntable, ya know. Or I could just be an old coot (*pulls plaid pants up to armpits*). But despite modern technology's best effort to turn me into a parody of Abe Simpson, 2012 was blessed with a bumper crop of awesome bands that managed to work well and play with each other. Here are 10 bands over five splits who figured out how to do it right this year.

5. Amputee/Nimbus Terrifix
Split
Piggiron Sound
The Nimbus Terrifix side still doesn't really wind me up, but new Amputee material is a gift from grindcore Olympus. Ugly and without a hint of pretense, Amputee are everything you really want in a grind band. Sometimes you just want to be walloped upside the cranium without subtlety or art. Here are two bands that don't get too wrapped up in the whys and wherefores of their music and just decide to smack you silly instead.
 
4. Nashgul/P.L.F.
Split
Bones Brigade
I imagine the Nashgul and P.L.F. split was probably recorded in the musical equivalent of a broke down drive in theater that specializes in seedy midnight movies that are high on boobs and blood and not so finicky about acting or plot. Or the kind haunted by Scooby-Doo villains. One or the other. This 7-inch is a loving tribute to a time when movies wallowed in depravity and violence. And they would have gotten away with it if it hadn't... Actually they got away with it pretty damn well. The next time some Hollywood bigwig wants to make an "ironic" throwback to the heyday of exploitation films, maybe these two bands can soundtrack it.  

3. Priapus/Old Painless
Split
Self Released
I wish I were in the land of cotton cuz grindcore there is not forgotten and runnin' rebs Priapus and Old Painless lobbed a cannonade with this self-released 7-inch. How some label didn't immediately snap this up remains the biggest head scratcher of the year. However, the bands have been spreading their nasty vibes all across the internet and it's yours for the taking at their respective Bandcamp pages. Old Painless' acquired taste vocals and Priapus' gutbusting death just might force you to secede from the world of record labels as a result.

2. Robocop/Detroit
Dead Language, Foreign Bodies
Grindcore Karaoke/Give Praise
Heading in the opposite direction from Priapus/Old Painless, Robocop and Detroit's neo-powerviolence pairing made the leap from Grindcore Karaoke's digital distribution network to a gorgeous 12-inch on Give Praise that you really, really want to add to your collection. It doesn't hurt that the bands both turned in defining performances. Robocop transitioned to a new, cleaner sound that swapped violence for intellect, placing a new spin on familiar songs and expanding the band's arsenal from broadswords to laser-sighted sniper rifles. By contrast, Detroit went atavistic, turning in a furrow-browed slate (and  J. Lo cover) that set up their subsequent solo releases later in the year.
 

1. Dephosphorus/Wake
Split
7 Degrees
Sometimes the most brilliant gambits are the most obvious. Case in point, the excellent and ascendant 7 Degrees Records grabbed its two foremost bands -- Wake and Dephospohorus --  and told them to each record enough music to fill one side of a 7-inch. The result was an absolutely scintillating pairing that proved to be a pivot from Wake's Leeches (which graced last year's list) to Deposphorus' dominating Night Sky Transform. Dephosphorus had backed off the artistry of Axiom for something more primal and vicious, which put them firmly in Wake's realm, giving the pairing a wonderful balance from side to side. This is absolutely everything you want in a split experience: two bands at the top of their game that clearly enjoyed the idea of working together.

At the Movies

"A child is influenced by the make believe," H.R. advised us on Bad Brains' "At the Movies." As any grown man in his mid-30s who considers his vintage Star Wars toy collection to be his retirement plan can aver, there's something about celluloid that sticks with you your whole life. That same kid smashing his Jedi and Sith action figures together after binging on a movie marathon will probably grow up to start a force-themed grindcore band (Sarlacc, I'm looking at you).
There's something about the power of movies that stick with us and influence our perception of the universe and our place in it. So it's no surprise to find out that movies and grindcore are inextricably intertwined whether it's Graf Orlock's stolen lyrics or everybody sampling the same five or six songs.
Some grinders take their love of film a step further, wearing their favorite movies on their sleeve so to speak. Here's to the bands that just straight up swiped their favorite films' names.

Horrified



Five fingering a movie name for your band is a tradition that is literally as old as grindcore itself. After Michigan's founding fathers of grind sensibly dropped the name Genocide, they went for the more subtle and more effective Repulsion. A pre-rape charge Roman Polanski broke down Catherine Deneuve in this 1965 psychological meltdown movie of the same name. Deneuve turned in a powerhouse performance as a repressed woman who completely cracks up over the course a single murderous afternoon. It's a film whose themes and body count had obvious appeal for the grindcore pioneers.

Paranoid Time



Grindcore has a fundamental distrust of governments and corporations and their unhealthy influence on wider society. Short-lived Michigan grinders (again with Michigan and stealing from movies!) The Parallax View were wont to scream about topics such as "Multi-National Death-Machines." So it's no surprise that the Warren Beaty film of the same name, about a shady corporation that specializes in political assassinations, resonated with their racket. Steeped in post-Watergate paranoia, the film was directed by Alan J. Pakula who also directed its real world counterpart All the President's Men.

I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK





Ryan Page is a man who loves his robots. He's gone to the cyborg well not once by twice with Robocop and Body Hammer. Both films deal with the nature of humanity as we stand on the cusp of a cybernetic evolutionary leap that may leave our biological shells redundant. Anybody who has sat down to ponder Page's Ballardian lyrical view knows those are themes right in his philosophical wheelhouse. But if he starts up a new project called Roy Batty, we may need to stage an intervention.

Adam and Eve and Eve and Eve



A film about a woman with multiple personality disorder seems like it would be a natural fit for the blastbeat treatment so it was a bit surprising that it was still sitting around unclaimed until Virginia band Three Faces of Eve, who many of you many know from the second This Comp Kills Fascists comp,  snapped it up. Psychological disorders and frantic screaming just seem to make a perfect pairing.

SPF 100



Burnt by the Sun stole the name for a movie that was just as arty and angular as they were. The story follows a Soviet officer and war hero who gets caught up in a Stalinist purge.  Everything he thought he knew about his country and his place in it come crashing around him over the course of a single summer day. Burnt by the Sun were a band steeped in humanist politics and the Oscar winning film pairs perfectly with those themes. It's a great example of a band's aesthetic and their inspiration coiling synergistically, creating a shared space between them.

G&P Review: Robocop/Detroit

They swept her on into the ballroom, where she was seized about the waist by a handsome young man in a Harris tweed coat and waltzed round and round, through the rustling, shuffling hush, under a great unlit chandelier. Each couple on the floor danced whatever was in the fellow's head: tango, two-step, bossa nova, slop. But how long, Oedpida thought, could it go on before collisions became a serious hindrance? There would have to be collisions. The only alternative was some unthinkable order of music, many rhythms, all keys at once, a choreography in which each couple meshed easy, predestined. Something they all heard with an extra sense atrophied in herself. She followed her partner's lead, limp in the young mute's clasp, waiting for the collisions to begin. But none came. She was danced for half an hour before, by mysterious consensus , everybody took a break, without having felt any touch but the touch of her partner. Jesus Arrabal would have called it an anarchist miracle. Oedipa, with no name for it, was only demoralized. She curtsied and fled.

Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49
1966

Robocop/Detroit
Dead Language, Foreign Bodies
Grindcore Karaoke
A great split requires a synthesis of disparate musical visions, an unspoken simpatico that's difficult enough to achieve within the competing personalities of a single band, let alone multiple. But 2012 has proven to be a banner year for synergistic tag teams. Dephosphorus and Wake have already made productive musical congress and Priapus stepped out with Old Painless. Now Robocop and Detroit up the bar with one of the most balanced faceoffs you'll hear. This long awaited split finds both bands moving toward a common center. Robocop has cleaned up their sound while Detroit follow up Pusher with another handful of more impassioned songs.
The most intriguing transformation is Robocop, who have never sounded this clean and crystalline. It adds new shadings to a signature song like "Feminism Uber Alles," which gets reinterpreted as a largely instrumental tune with John Zorn-style sax wailing standing in for vocals. I think I miss the loud, violent sound of their past efforts where it sounded like the songs only held together by dint of an anarchist miracle, but nonetheless it's absolutely fascinating to hear the band through new ears. The cleaner production gives more prominence to all the subtleties at play, like the constant background hum that unsettles "Psychic Transferal." Otherwise, Robocop once again indulge in their wonted obsession with how the frighteningly permeable meat we call our bodies interface with the 21st Century.
Detroit's half meshes perfectly with their Pusher material (the song "Pusher" closes out their selections, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear these songs come from that same recording session). The guitars are reedy and needling, insistent and uncomfortable. It provides the perfect platform for the all in conviction of songs like "Day After Day," which captures and embodies the relentless march of time that must drag at and wear down the genuinely depressed. Elsewhere, the mournful, clean-toned dirge of the primarily instrumental "Into You" shows real maturity as it slides into a brief spat of distorted rage and ranting defiance.
Detroit and Robocop are not just two bands thrown together for the sake of mutual promotion. Rather, this is a great pairing of two modern power violence bands take similar routes to entirely different, but still complementary, destinations. This one is a must hear.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: The 1-8 Matchups

Ok, you bitched, you moaned, you cajoled, you wheedled and you whined. The end result is a stronger faceoff structure. So now it's time to drop the gloves.
Just like the last outing, I'll post the matchups each week and you tell me who should win and, just as importantly, why. In the event of a tie or a really close decision or just because I'm a total dick and I feel like pissing in your eye, a well reasoned argument can carry the day.

So let's get down to it. You've got until Sunday to make your case.

The Old Guard
1. Olivo/Freeman (Repulsion) v. 8. Dickinson (Heresy/Unseen Terror)
Michigan grave robbers v. an English hardcore hooligan.

The Innovators
1. Procopio/Baglino (Human Remains) v. 8. Kapo (Swarrrm)
Unsung American innovators v. an artistic Japanese oddball. If Kapo loses, Perpetual Strife just might cry.

The Punks
1. Burda/McLachlan (Phobia) v. 8. Martinez (Cretin)
The premier punk duo v. the mistress of the grotesque.

The Technicians
1. Matsubara (GridLink/Mortalized/Hayaino Daisuki) v. 8. Page (Body Hammer/Robocop)
If Matsubara didn't exist, Studio Ghibli would have had to animate him. Page can make music out of toothbrushes and an electric fans. He's also a kick ass young guitarist.

Grind in Rewind 2011: The 20 of '11

Where 2010 was a disappointing wasteland of blandness, 2011 overfloweth with awesome grind. Unfortunately, the attrition rate was also high as we lost Maruta, Defeatist, Ablach and The Endless Blockade. But let's focus on the positive: there was a hell of a lot to smile about in the last 12 months. And that was before my copy of the new Brutal Truth album finally showed up this month after a lengthy detour through the limbo known as "back order."

So let the arguments begin!

20. Total Fucking Destruction
Hater
Translation Loss
Take another trip on Rich Hoak et al's grindfreak railroad. Hater's crazy train isn't so much going off the rails as it is forcing everyone to reroute their travel plans. Total Fucking Destruction's bullet train battery meanders further afield than even Brutal Truth. Though Hater is the most straightforward of TFD's experiments, it still tap dances its way through musical minefields most other bands choose to circumnavigate. It's an approach that either means they're going to accomplish the unthinkable or somebody's going home short a leg. Possibly both.

19.
Ablach
Dha
Grindcore Karaoke
Scottish grindcore archeologists Ablach were inextricably tied to their country's storied history. Putting on Dha was like cracking a textbook on warring clans, witch panics and getting blitzed on whiskey. Good wholesome fun, all. Dha, which will be the band's epitaph, was a perfect step forward from flawed first album, Aon. Dha just did everything right, demonstrating the consummate skill that I knew was lurking behind their debut's craptacular production. With the kind of growth they've shown it's a shame they won't get to Tri.

18. Hip Cops
In the Shadow of a Grinding Death
Bullshit Propaganda
There's no one less hip than a cop. Unless your cop revels in classic first wave-style grind that
smooshes together the earliest output of S.O.B. and Napalm Death. Hip Cops are not progressive. They do not have technical chops. Their songs do not advance the grindcore cause or culture a single iota. All they do is thrash the joint any time their 7-inch hits the turntable. This is the kind of unpretentious, perfectly performed grindcore record that keeps the style rooted in its history and constantly vital.

17. Noisear
Subvert the Dominant Paradigm
Relapse
More so even than GridLink or Wormrot, I'd say Noisear may be the most controversial and debated album of 2011. Some of you instantly latched on to their mixture of Discordance Axis and Human Remains, and it's hard not to be enthralled by their circus grind antics. And then there's "Noiseruption." Some of you can shrug off a 22 minute noise track that sucks up half the album's run time and has zero connection the preceding music. I had a harder time with that, but when Noisear were clicking, Subvert the Dominant Paradigm was still a grisly beast of a bitch.

16. Cloud Rat
Cloud Rat
IFB Records/Grindcore Karaoke
There's something brewing up in Michigan. Cloud Rat and The Oily Menace are picking up and carrying on the fastcore legacy left by xBrainiax and Threatener and turning it into something that straddles the current with the historic in a way the seamlessly blends the twin impulses. Cloud Rat just did everything right on their self-titled record, which boasts 11 songs of adrenaline pressed to wax (or bytes if you go with the download version). Cloud Rat chased their full length with a killer threeway with The Oily Menace and Wolbachia, proving the record was no fluke.

15. Trap Them
Darker Handcraft
Prosthetic
Trap Them have pretty firmly established their M.O. at this point: grab bits of every wave of speedy hardcore and metal and chainsaw their way through them all. Not much has changed album to album but Trap Them keep refining their sound each outing, jettisoning what little detritus remains. That impeccable riff to "Evictionaries" remains one of the single best guitar moments of 2011. Darker Handcraft is worth the entry fee for that song alone.

14. Drugs of Faith
Corroded
Selfemadegod
Richard Johnson added rock 'n' roll swagger to his grindcore grimace with Drugs of Faith's first full length album, Corroded. It was a moody, personal album that seethes through various shades of gray and washed out brown. Johnson has always been ahead of his peers as the cornerstone of Enemy Soil or Agoraphobic Nosebleed, but with Drugs of Faith he's blazing an even more provocative trail through his own mental landscape. Corroded bravely speaks to the personal and uncomfortable in us all.

13. Keitzer
Descend into Heresy
FDA Rekotz
Descend into Heresy is the sound of your concussed ears ringing as you stagger forth dazed and bloodied from the bomb crater in the aftermath of an unexpected rocket attack. Keitzer only have one gear: implacable. The Germans take the direct route, obstacles be damned, and plow over any bystanders in their wake. Bolstered by heaping helpings of death with their grind, Keitzer are brutal and none too specific about their targets.

12. Defeatist
Tyranny of Decay
Self Released
Facing the extinction they've so long prophesied, Defeatist left it all on the table for final album Tyranny of Decay. Self-described "apocalypse kook" Aaron Nichols howled his way to near-perfection, finally bringing some much needed variety to his throat work. Everything else, Defeatist simply turned up their already impeccable assault, led by the concussive battery of drummer Joel Stallings. Perhaps a touch slower than their past efforts, Tyranny of Decay allowed Defeatist more room to explore and expand. It's the band's most varied and expressive record. It makes for a quality tombstone to a trio of lifers' bloody career.

11. Rotten Sound
Cursed
Relapse
Rotten Sound churn out quality albums just about as often as the San Jose Sharks choke in the playoffs. It's such a regular occurrence that sometimes it's easy to take the Finns for granted. Cursed continues their career-long streak of great records, emphasizing their crust punk roots more this outing. Songs get more space to breathe without the compulsion to snap every neck in Helsinki. Instead, plenty of Cursed's best offerings are nod-along headbangers that build to a slow burn climax.

10. Wake
Leeches
7 Degrees
In their wake: That's where these young Canadians are leaving many of their contemporaries. Following up an EP that was a clear 2010 standout, Wake make their second trip to the year end countdown with their first full length, Leeches. Second time out, Wake are sounding more comfortable in the hobnail boots they use to stomp craniums. Leeches is a wonderfully huge sounding album curated by Scott Hull and he lets the boys root around in his cabinet of grind, death and power violence oddities. There's plenty they seem to have picked up from the foot of the master.

9. Robocop
II
Grindcore Karaoke
Robocop cooked up the clear winner of the hometown shout out race with power violence piss take "Maine is the Bastard." But the band's cleverness is not limited to lyrical snark. A postmodern, postindustrial, post-power violence romp through a world where the membranes between man and machine are becoming dangerously (intriguingly?) permeable, Robocop are the high priests of J.G. Ballard-core. "Aftermathematics" felt a little clunky and disjointed for my taste, but that's really nitpicking at this point. This is a band that's more on the ball, intelligent and articulate than many of the their better acclaimed predecessors.

8. Cellgraft
Deception Schematic
No Reprieve
Cellgraft are the epitome of the internet band. Their success among the grindcore masses has largely been attributable to glowing blog praise and good old fashioned word of email. Florida's premiere grindcore trio slapped us upside the collective noggin with Deception Schematic, a knotty, snarling 7-inch worth of bile, broken resisters and collapsed civilization debris into songs that (all but on one of which) never crack a minute. I prefer Deception Schematic's grisly guitar tone (some of you were more partial to External Habitation's tinny table saw buzz), but regardless of your preferences, Cellgraft never disappoint.

7. thedowngoing
Untitled EP
Grindcore Karaoke
Not only do those sneaky fucks in Australia claim Christmas and the New Year are mid-summer holidays (seriously?) but they've been plotting grindcore domination while we've been distracted by Foster's beer commercials and old Paul Hogan movies. We were convinced the Aussies are a bunch of smiling, benevolently sloshed blokes right up until the point thedowngoing decided to extrude our souls through our nostrils on the harrowing Untitled EP (recently snagged by Grindcore Karaoke). Mathias Huxley gives the vocal performance of a lifetime, fully committing himself to his finest Linda Blair impersonation. I'll never look at the land of kangaroos and koalas the same way again.

6. Wormrot
Dirge
Earache
By Wormrot standards, Dirge was a safe, slightly flawed record. By every other band's standards, Dirge would have been a career-making album. Hewing a bit too closely to the mold established by 2009 champion Abuse, Dirge found the Singaporean trio reveling in the same cross pollination of Repulsion and Insect Warfare they've claimed as their own patch of grindcore terra. Rasyid and Fitri have reached a level of musical simpatico you'd expect only from performers who have been playing together for decades and the shared joy of their performance elevates Dirge from its humble ambitions. I fully expect Wormrot to take another run at the top spot with their next album.

5. Dephosphorus
Axiom
7 Degrees
Nothing prepared for me for the journey Greek grindonauts Dephosphorus had planned with debut mini-album Axiom. Nothing excites me more than to stumble across a never before heard of band that totally kicks my ass, and I'm still walking around with a bruised rump courtesy of Dephosphorus several months later. Easily the biggest surprise of the year, Axiom is also one of the best albums. It stitches together grind, crust, atmosphere and bits of black metal's obsession with things unworldly; Axiom is one of the most compelling records I heard in 2011. The 12-inch gatefold put out by 7 Degrees is also ABSOLUTELY STUNNING and the best packaging to be found this year. Dephosphorus started the year as unknowns but they close it out with upcoming full length Night Sky Transform lodged at the top of my most anticipated list.

4. PSUDOKU
Space Grind
Revulsion
Parlamentarisk Sodomi was one of my favorite bands to emerge in the last several years, churning out ass kicking albums almost effortlessly year after year. Then solo, misanthropic grindmonger Papirmollen crossed up Parlamentarisk with Parliament-Funkadelic and blasted off into the cosmos to sodomize Uranus. Piloting a neon-pink Super Star Destroyer named PSUDOKU, Mollen added weird keyboards, odd noises and space special effects to his already prodigious grind arsenal. This was the only album released all year that can compete with Orphan on a purely adrenaline basis. This atomic dog has learned some new tricks.

3. Maruta
Forward Into Regression
Willowtip
Forward into Regression was the most grisly sounding album afflicted upon the grindily minded in 2011. Maruta's (sadly/frustratingly/disappointingly) final album gnawed at your femur and sucked out the marrow inside. Hopscotching between grind and power violence is a pretty standard trick in most bands' bags these days, but nobody mixed them with the flair of Maruta. That snarling, nasty guitar tone is instantly recognizable as a serial killer's trademark flourish. It's a shame to see a band as promising as Maruta, still on the upward swing of their young careers, implode, but they left behind two excellent albums, especially Forward into Regression.

2. Looking for an Answer
Eterno Treblinka
Relapse
There is nothing flashy about Eterno Treblinka, but Looking for an Answer very quietly and skillfully turned in a flawless grindcore record. Every song is catchy and perfectly crafted. Every riff, fill and Sylvester the Cat gone grind scream serves to advance the whole. There is not a superfluous second to be found. Looking for an Answer's ideology is just as uncompromising as their music; religion, politics and carnivores all go under their knife over the course of 17 bright line political statements. Spanish grind is one of the most exciting European scenes going right now and Looking for an Answer just proved they're at the head of that pack.

1. GridLink
Orphan
Hydra Head
Helen Keller could see this coming. I think I've made my feelings about Orphan fairly clear. We all know where we are on this album, so rather than rehash past debates, I'm simply going to shamelessly quote something fellow Chang fanboi Da5e of Cepahalochromoscope fame once told me:

I'd go so far as to say it's grindcore 3.0... Napalm Death's early stuff was the initial release (their Crass soundalike demos being an alpha), TID was grindcore 2.0, Amber Gray was a beta release and Orphan is a new beast, fully HTML5 compliant, demonstrating that the genre has stagnated and needs to evolve and move forward. I'd stick my neck out and say Matsubara is the greatest songwriter working in extreme music.

I find it hard to disagree with any of that. How many other grind bands can claim their music was used to violate the UN Convention Against Torture in an episode of Homeland?

You Grind...But Why?: Ryan Page

Ryan Page is one of the most exciting of the young guns slinging a guitar (or sometimes an electric toothbrush or bedframe) these days. Whether it's marrying Italian horror soundtracks with faulty electronics and grindcore in Body Hammer or revitalizing power violence for the 21st Century in Robocop, Page is consistently several steps ahead of his peers. He's been so successful (musically if not necessarily financially) because his compositions are carefully considered. Grind and power violence are no lark for him, and he approaches his music as would any other serious composer. Even if his methods are...unconventional.

"I've been trying to think of an answer that's a bit more personal than 'I've always been into extremes and grindcore is the most extreme blah blah blah,' unfortunately I think that's ultimately pretty close to what I was thinking at the time. Drone and grind are the spaces where tempo, perceptually and conceptually, begins to fall apart. There's a quote from Stockhausen somewhere about the point at which rhythm ceases to be perceived as such. Essentially the idea is that if a rhythm is slow enough (the sun coming up everyday for example) it loses its rhythmic character and becomes something more systemic, similarly extremely fast rhythms essentially become tonal, or in the case of Body Hammer, a noise band. Anyway, at the time I was interested in the barriers for speed and the fastest possible music, and eventually I wanted to take things further, beyond what Agoraphobic Nosebleed was doing, which was my benchmark for grindcore at the time (and to a certain extent it still is). This was around age 15 or 16. I was playing in a hardcore/grind band, and becoming somewhat frustrated with the limitations of that.
"I guess the other element of the narrative is that I also developed an interest in noise; an interest that only grew when my bandmates protested ('that's stupid, you can't have a separate track just for feedback,' 'it needs to become a song eventually'). Interestingly, the sound I hoped to achieve with this band was a lot like how Robocop II ended up. So out of the frustrations of feeling limited by playing with other people, I started the recordings that became Jigoku.
"Many of the songs on that album came from improvisations, using microphone feedback or prepared guitar. I was interested in using limited means (guitars, microphones, and drum machines, no synthesizers) to create a fairly broad sound. I wanted to remove myself from music as much as possible. I would detune my guitars to the point where they were no longer producing pitch, and use a wrench I found like a bow (and arrow, although sometimes in the musical sense as well) or create rhythms by hitting my pickups. On one track I used a giant reverb on the a recording I made of scraping on a bedframe."

G&P Review: Robocop

Robocop
II
Grindcore Karaoke

I eased myself on to the dusty vinyl seat, tipped back by the bowing of the floor. The steering column had reared forward six inches toward my chest. I lifted my nervous legs into the car and placed my feet on the rubber cleats of the pedals, which had been forced out of the engine compartment so that my knees were pressed against my chest. In front of me the instrument panel had been buckled inwards, cracking the clock and speedometer dials. Sitting here in this deformed cabin, filled with dust and damp carpeting, I tried to visualize myself at the moment of collision, the failure of the technical relationship between my own body, the assumptions of the skin, and the engineering structure which supported it.

J.G. Ballard
Crash
1973

There’s a benevolent psychopathology driving Robocop to obliterate that illusory, ephemeral boundary between Meat and Machine. The collision of the twin powers – violence and electronics – is a fertilizing and not a destructive event. It's all sex and car crashes and 90 second shots of intelligent, composed hardcore histrionics.
Anyone who flipped to Robocop’s demo will find II superficially familiar, but the songs have gone through additional destructive bodywork. You can run your fingers down the chassis of “I Hope All Your Friends Die” and “Feminism Uber Alles” and read the most recent dents, dings and abrasions the way a blind man reads Braille. “Feminism Uber Alles” has wrenched metal and fiberglass into something more Slayerly while the titanic cymbal crashes that collapsed “I Hope All Your Friends Die” have been left on the rust heap.
New songs like “Maine is the Bastard” clip a car battery to Man is the Bastard’s signature stomp jolting it into the next decade. The electronic interludes – including a channel changing stutter step wash leading up to a faithful rendition of Napalm Death’s “You Suffer” – are a perfect distillation of modern information overload society. Half heard bits of cinema dialogue are ripped from context, flashed along before you can orient them, get smashed by white noise and immediately discarded. Authorial intent is dead; nothing has inherent meaning. Even when it’s not as successful – the nearly eight minute “Aftermathematics” just doesn't have an emotional payoff – the point comes pounding through.
While the retro power violence style has blossomed in recent years, too many bands are content to simply rehash the ’90s. Robocop are the first nu-power violence (yeah, I hate that term too, but you know what I mean) band I’ve heard that’s made a legitimate case that the violent hardcore sound has a 21st Century future. This is the brave new world of hardcore.

Grind in Rewind 2010: The Kids are Alright

I consciously try not to be that grumpy old dude who’s constantly complaining about how awesome things were when I was a young’un. As far as I’m concerned, musically, things are only getting better. Media fragmentation and the demise of the record label business model have shattered the entertainment landscape, weeding out those doing it for a paycheck and forcing the next generation of the truly dedicated to throw themselves out there and face the consequences. A lot of really cool demos have crossed my laptop this year, forcing me to reconsider my outlook on the pending collapse of all civilization as we know it into a Taylor Swiftian apocalypse of musical suck. The kids are alright as long as they keep banging out music this inventive. Here are five unsigned bands that won me over in 2010.

5. No Gang Colors
This is Your God
This is your god, and he really hates your ass. He insists on torturing you with electronic amalgams of clicking grind and harsh, psychedelic white noise. This is what would have happened if Justin Broadrick didn’t totally abandon grind for industrial post-Napalm Death. Encomiums to weed and power tools seem like a great way to lose a finger, but it’s also a perfect way to spend 11 minutes of your life.

4. Amputee
Demo
Two minutes. That’s all it took for New Jersey’s Amputee to cement themselves firmly in my affections. Yes, they sound like Assuck. No, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The fact that I could listen to their four song demo about three times before I finished typing this makes it all the better.

3. Standing on a Floor of Bodies
Teaching Pigs to Sing
Rising from the ashes of Thousandswilldie, one man band Standing on a Floor of Bodies ear rape four minutes of your life with an all bass ’n’ drum machine assault on your higher cortical functions. It’s got all the atmosphere of a suffocating horror film soundscape crammed into seven claustrophobic songs that won’t let go until those tentacled abominations in the basement decide they’re done with you.

2. Robocop
Demo 2009
Part man. Part machine. All power violence. Ryan “Body Hammer/Rational Punk” Page and his Robocop friends set out to torture hardcore with their seven track demo. Every instrument rattles against the others like clashing pots in an earthquake-addled kitchen producing a delightful racket of impassioned, urgent hardcore. And their most recent offerings have only spiraled off into more aggressive, abrasive directions.

1. Satellite Sleep
Demo
Satellite Sleep’s three songs of aquatically-tinged Australian hardcore just keep getting better with each listen. For a demo, the band just nailed that perfect somnambulant atmosphere, rising above the rest. This is what Eraserhead’s lady in the radiator sequence would have sounded like if it were filtered through post-millennial hardcore. Everything is hazy and disorienting but wonderfully riveting all at the same time.

Demo-lition Derby: Robocop

Robocop
Demo 2009
Aside from being my favorite rational punk, Ryan Page is an internet era Renaissance man. The multimedia mogul made his own film when he wasn’t busy setting all of my favorite movies to electroshocked music in Body Hammer (though I’m still waiting on an Ichi the Killer-themed song). If that weren’t enough to keep the college student busy, Page is also getting powerfully violent with hardcore band Robocop.
But nothing is ever that simple is it. I haven’t been able to get enough of demo opener “Intro/I Hope All Your Friends Die” as it bends sinister Holy Mountain era Sleep sludge into a power violence arc, just a snarling, nasty knot of seething aggression. The long, strained notes aren’t so much bent as outright garroted. Like Satellite Sleep, this is a demo that rises above the pack with a distinct and engaging atmosphere to the songs.
The rest of the demo works more familiar Capitalist Casualties-style territory, blasting punk that’s bolstered by impeccable drumming. The fills are spot on and always timely and the hammering is perfectly precise. After this demo, Robocop has meandered into even more interesting and experimental material, making them one to watch.
You can check out Robocop’s demo here , and they’re Bandcamped out here with some new material.