Jersey Boys: Amputee Go Out on a Limb for Grindcore

Extreme metal revels in the sort of morbid, tasteless fascination with death, destruction and misery that most people who consider themselves well adjusted endeavor to avoid. In fact, a blunt indifference to social niceties is often treated as a point of honor in the ongoing arms race to provoke the biggest rise out of the squares. And then there are those hilarious moments when metal's fascination with dismemberment and B-movie gore makes its awkward acquaintance with flesh and blood reality.
Case in point: Actual amputees have crashed grinders Amputee's social media profiles, mistaking the New Jersey  band for some sort of support group.
"I obviously have nothing against actual amputees, but I don’t know why they add us on Facebook or send us 'Amputee and Proud' messages," guitarist Bill Sikora said. "That’s cool and all, but I think it’s pretty clear we’re some shitty band they don’t care about. Our videos on YouTube get insane amounts of views as well. I’m assuming it's total creeps looking for amputee porn and settling for us. I would say that is the biggest blowback aside from trying to tell your grandparents and co-workers your band’s name, but that's every band I’ve ever been in. Band names suck."
Sikora is being a bit modest because Amputee is an awesome band name and he and bandmates John and Ben previously played in the wonderfully titled Chainsaw to the Face (notable for their contribution to the first volume of This Comp Kills Fascists). Rounded out by vocalist Brian (ex-Doomsday Machine Schematic who will be ceding his spot to new screamer Chris this year), the New Jersey quartet have built their buzz on a devastating demo, a tidy 7-inch and a split with Nimbus Terrifix that exhume, embody and update the path blazed by Assuck before them. Along with likeminded grinders Cellgraft, Backslider and Triac (with whom they are readying a split), Amputee revel in the no frills grind path blazed by the Floridian band. But Amputee would like reductive internet assholes who appointed themselves as musical arbiters (not thinking of anybody in particular, here) to know the band does have other influences too.
"I would say, for us, we have no intention on revolutionizing grind or whatever," Sikora said. "We just grew up on old Slap a Ham and Earache stuff. I think people get too hung up on nostalgia. I mean, we’re not trying to relive something we were never apart of. Realistically, how could we ever get sick of being compared to Assuck? I am nothing short of flattered to the comparisons to [Excruciating Terror] or Fear of God as well, but I don’t want people to think we are a revivalist-type band. What it comes down to is playing music that isn’t complete horse shit and having fun. Our direct influences would be bands like the three mentioned above, Autopsy, Crossed Out, Gorguts, Entombed and Infest."
Reached from the studio where he's laying down the beats for Triac's half of the upcoming split, drummer Jake Cregger enthused about Amputee's raw, relentless approach, regardless of any influences.
"If you boil their sound down to its raw essence then you have high energy and … malicious intent, (Name that song!)," he said. "I’d say that if Amputee were equipped with a bag of potatoes, an old boot and a can of chili, they would still manage to make something forceful and nasty. That is why they exist and they don’t have patience for much else. I think that comes across well, live and on record." 


Draw Back a Stump

Amputee will get to parade their command of grind beyond the cream of Florida circa 1991  this year as they ready their upcoming split with Triac (who are recording tracks for their own split with Backslider during the same session) as well as a planned full length.
"We’ve known the Triac guys for years from playing shows with Chainsaw," Sikora said. "Out of mutual love for each other’s bands, we set up a tour and a split soon followed. Those dudes were seriously great to be on the road with and some talk of future touring has come up. Both bands are finishing up and Haunted Hotel will be putting it out. I honestly can’t say when it will be out but for sure no later than 2013."
 Cregger said split was a natural idea because the two bands are simpatico both musically and on a personal level.
"We are really excited to do a split with Amputee because, aside from being great guys, they are such a consistently nasty sounding band live and on record," Cregger said. "We have slowly been moving in the same direction sonically as best we can, and it seems to be a great fit. They really enjoy what they do which makes a huge difference and they execute their husky blend of grindcore very well. On top of that, having toured with them, they are truly the sweetest bunch of fudge-pots and made every day of tour a good time. Touring with them is like living an endless Three Stooges bit. They might not be pretty, but there is a ton of character underneath those gnarled mugs."

A Leg to Stand On

While the band is still hunting for a label to partner with for the full length, Sikora said the new material is "way less Assuck-worship," which may force me to compare them to a new band when it finally comes out.
The band also plans to commemorate first vocalist Brian's run with the band with a limited run of discography cassettes essentially collecting all of the band's output with his contribution. Stepping to Brian's mic will be new vocalist Chris.
"Our new vocalist is our good buddy, Chris. I have played in numerous hardcore bands with him and he has the biggest Ripchord button I’ve ever seen. Amputee will be back in action [this] year and playing shows around March. Brian will be on our upcoming split with Triac and that will be his last. We're bummed to see him go, but he’s a busy guy. We wish him the best."
While Sikora promises the new full length will expand Amputee's repertoire beyond Assuck, he can't dodge his influences in his self proclaimed Larm-core band Attitude Era. In fact, it turns out just about every member of Amputee has secret musical identity as well.
"Chris and I are in a poorly named fastcore band, Attitude Era," Sikora said. "Logan from Backslider, Chris, our buddy Jim and I wanted to start a band that sounded just like Heresy, Intense Degree, Deep Wound, etc. I play drums and we don’t distort the bass. We just put out a tape on Eat The Life from Chicago. You can google 'Attitude Era Philly' and a Bandcamp link should come up or one of our several three minute sets are on YouTube. Also, check out Brian and John’s band with Pat from Backslider, Callous. Ben also does a band with Josh from [Doomsday Machine Schematic] called Goat Thrower. If you’re into Dissection or At the Gates, you’ll love them."

A Leaden Stride to Nowhere: A (Not So) Brief History of Ending on a Slow Song

Grindcore is hit and run music. Its strength comes from an unrelenting campaign of musical shock and awe, dispensing with songwriting conventions like verses, choruses and all that other assorted folderol to boil tunes down to their atavistic core. And then it pummels you with a dozen songs in a row, often with no pause between to catch your breath. It's that synergistic adrenaline rush that gives the style its power.
So why do so many bands muck it all up by ending albums with drawn out slow songs? What is this inexplicable compulsion to tack on an unnecessary slow song at the end? It doesn't have to be this way. Discordance Axis made "A Leaden Stride to Nowhere" the penultimate song on masterpiece The Inalienable Dreamless, stabbing you in the earholes with the brutalizing "Drowned" as you limp off spent and bloody. Nasum probably wrote the single greatest slow song ever penned by a grind band with the poignant "The Final Sleep" on Helvete, but they recognized the power of what they had in the tune and stuck it in the middle rather than relegating it to the end.
I've mentioned bands throwing unexpected bits of musical failure at the end of albums before, but this ending on a doom song thing is so pervasive to have become a cliche. How did we get to this place, you ask? Here's a quick jog down memory lane.

Don't Fear the Reaper

Probably the first instance of the phenomenon can be traced to arguably the first ever grind album, Siege's 1984 demo Drop Dead. The length and contents have Drop Dead have shifted and grown over the years as bonus tracks have been added and deleted, but one constant remains: it always ends on the seven minute sax-laden freakout that is "Grim Reaper." The band took the training wheels of fast hardcore and set it on the path of the one true grind, but they also inadvertently established the ending on a doom song cliche as well.



Cursed to Crawl

As with any good grindcore cliche, of course Napalm Death has to factor into the script. Though they set into stone what Siege had pressed into clay, Napalm Death took their time to leave their mark on this one. In fact, the Side A Scum lineup went to the opposite extreme, closing out their half of the album with the two second bliss of "You Suffer." No, it wasn't until 1988's From Enslavement to Obliteration that Napalm Death caught the slow song bug, capping off the album with three minutes of fake Swans plod in the form of "The Curse," which served to bookend the album with slow motion starter "Evolved as One."



Another dozen albums and a whole new lineup later, Napalm Death are still pulling this trick out on occasion. In fact, for The Code is Red...Long Live the Code in 2005 Napalm Death pulled the double whammy, closing out with a pair of slow songs (and again shamelessly stealing from Swans) in the shape of "Morale" and "Our Pain is Their Power."





Semper Grind Fidelis

The stylistic tick didn't take long to embed itself in the second wave of grindcore royalty either. Brutal Truth have never had a problem mixing and matching styles and tempos, but they never really fell under the spell of the last song doom phenomenon until 2009's comeback album Evolution Through Revolution and its end piece, the decidedly non-grinding "Grind Fidelity."



Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

While I keep saying Phobia's 1998 album Means of Existence is my favorite album of their extensive catalog, the longer I keep writing about it, the more I keep picking up on irritating little quirks. Like the seven minutes of stumbling doom slumber that are album finisher "Ruined." Obviously, I need to stop thinking critically about this record before I ruin it for myself. However, this does help put drummer John Haddad's later jump to doomsters Eyes of Fire into perspective.



In fact, Phobia pulled the exact same stunt three years later on follow up full length Serenity Through Pain. This time they kept last song "Sovereign" to a more concise four minutes of ambient drone and spoken word mumbling.



Go, Go Gadget

If there's a formula to Gadget albums, it would be this: slam listeners in the face with a crazy intense song off the bat and then chill it all out at the end with a slow song. It's a remarkably potent formula that's apparently served them very well because they've done it twice now. Starting with 2004's Remote, Gadget said fare thee well with the rolling bit of ambient unease that was "Tema: Skit."



They clearly thought the formula worked because they did it again at the end of 2006's The Funeral March. Once again the plodding dirge of " Tingens Föbannelse" calmed everyone out on their way out the door. Unfortunately, this one's not available on YouTube and SoundCloud won't let me upload it. So you'll just have to take my word for it on this one.

Mess With Texas

Kill the Client have a well deserved reputation as unrelenting grind maniacs, but they've also succumbed to the seductive allure of getting all down in the dumps at the end of an album. For 2005's Escalation of Hostility, the Texas chainsaw massacre crew departed from their frothing mouthed style to slow everything down like a sizzling, lethargic Texas panhandle summer on "Negative One." Interestingly, they've not gone back to that move since their first full length. The subsequent two long players have been all grind all the time instead and are probably the better for it.



Rotten to the Core

Rotten Sound are fond of shoving the longest song on the album to the end, but they usually kept it grinding. They never went for the full slow song closer until 2008's Cycles. Five albums in, that's when the Finns decided to mix the formula up a tad and get their doom and gloom on with the four minute plod that is "Trust." This is not what Rotten Sound are known for or what they really do best, but if they keep it to one album out of every five, I'll let it slide.



You Suffer...But Why?

I'm going to say it. It needs to be said. If you're in a grind band, your strength is probably in writing great grind songs. Doom is not your thing because otherwise you'd be in a doom band. Case in point, Suffering Mind's "Ostateczny Pogrzeb," which puts paid to At War With Mankind. Now Suffering Mind are an excellent grind band and you won't catch me disparaging their way with a blastbeat, but "Ostateczny Pogrzeb" finds one slow motion riff, rides it to death and then takes it out back and pokes with a stick for a couple extra minutes just to be sure. In a shorter, tighter incarnation, I wouldn't have a problem with it. However, I think as is it ultimately deflates the end of At War With Mankind a tad.



Blasphemy Made Flesh

Baltimore's Triac actually pulled off one the better slow song finales on short album Blue Room. The band's signature brew of blasting grind and scrungy power violence came to a nicely fermented hardcore head on last song "My First Blasphemy." Unlike a lot of other grind bands, Triac actually have a way with a slow song that doesn't completely negate the preceding album experience. Ending on a slow song may be a tired cliche, but I wouldn't be as irritated by it if more songs were this good.



Bloody Hell

The slow final song shows no signs of fading into grindcore history, either. Bloody Phoenix got into the act in 2010. The title track of album Death to Everyone, which opened with a rip on Neurosis, closed out with three minutes of slow rolling drums and jabbering about god being dead. Band mainstay Jerry Flores has been kicking around grindcore for 20 years, but as far as I know, this is the first time he's resorted to this particular genre trope.




The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

So after all that bitching, I don't want to leave you with the impression that I'm opposed to ending on a slow song entirely. In fact, quite the opposite. Done well, a good slow song at the end lets an album's ideas simmer in the brain, slowly seeping through your cortex to embed themselves in the stuff of your nightmares. Tusk very effectively pulled off that move at the end of 2004 masterwork The Tree of No Return with not one but two slow doom songs at the end. It works largely because the band's cross breeding of Pig Destroyer and Neurosis give them the musical palette to explore wider vistas and the EP's central narrative -- a man gets lost in the wilderness, goes crazy from hunger and thirst and is subsequently eaten by bears -- demands a musical arc that bends from initial grindcore panic to doom metal delirium. So Tusk left us with the twin desolation that was "Starvation Dementia" and "Ursus Arctos -- Walk the Valley." This is how you do ending on a slow song properly.

G&P Review: Triac

"You. One live body, brains still somewhat intact. Molly, Case. My name's Molly. I'm collecting you for a man I work for. Just wants to talk, is all. Nobody wants to hurt you."
"That's good."
" 'Cept I do hurt people sometimes, Case. I guess it's just the way I'm wired."

William Gibson
Neuromancer
1984

Triac
...Always Meant to Hurt You
A389 Recordings
Delightfully atavistic, Triac dispense with any pretense of mild-mannered Bruce Bannerisms on ...Always Meant to Hurt You and careen face first into HULK SMASH! This four-song 7-inch (which comes a complimentary download for you digiterati) is refreshing in its unpretentious shot to your spinal column.
Originally released as a tour-only cassette in 2010, the good folks at A389 have brought Triac's latest to the masses on a sweet vinyl platter that definitely would have bumped somebody off the best of 2011 list had I gotten my copy in time.
For their follow up to the impressive Blue Room, Triac have gotten leaner and more nasty in disposition. Second sider "Halo" swings with that urban hardcore swagger previously incarnated by Unsane. Here it gets riddled with a grind sense of nasty nihilism and punk seethe. It's driven to ever more reckless tempos by Jake Cregger's frantic drumming only to slide into ringing guitar feedback and clotted amp noise. The guitars of opener "Child Thief " flail with abandon, running body-first into whatever obstacle foolishly stumbles into their transit. Then there's the just-short-of-a-whine vocal sneer taunting you, daring you to punch back, knowing you're probably too much of a pussy to try.
...Always Meant to Hurt You is a lithe animal, poorly caged ferocity slimmed down to a lean jungle predator. Where Blue Room was big and boisterous, this outing finds Triac far more focused and enraged. Shedding the extra pounds really suits them. Come feel the pain.

G&P Review: This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 2

This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 2
Relapse
Let me get my one complaint about Scott Hull’s latest retro comp grindfest out of the way first. Where the first volume reveled in the first new recorded music from Brutal Truth in a decade and the hey-look-at-that-they’re-still-alive-ness of Agents of Satan, by and large, the first comp was an awesome collection of up and comers that probably gave the wider world their first good look at the next wave of young grind. So, I’m rather disappointed to see the second volume is nearly half filled with reunited bands old enough to have appeared on the original Cry Now, Cry Later and Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrggaaah! comps this is aping. The effect threatens to turn This Comp Kills Fascists Vol. 2 into story hour at the local VFW as grizzled geezers rehash their salad days. The tracks from defunct pre-Mastodon grinders Social Infestation are from 2002, ferchrissakes.
But enough bitching, Vol. 2 packs 50 percent more grind and power violence than its predecessor and it’s still a vital link to a rash of new bands worth hearing.
The belles of the ball are easily Noisear who are at once speedy and engrossing, finally stepping out from under the shadow of Discordance Axis to become something that is at once technical, cathartic and wholly their own.
Triac are also raucous and rough and tumble while finally hearing Hummingbird of Death’s lofi ruckus, I get what everyone’s been raving about. Give Slovakians Idiots Parade a few more years and I could see them gunning for Suffering Mind’s championship belt. Drugs of Faith rehash “An Ode to Those Unwed” from their self titled EP and give us a new track, “Loss of Credibility,” that bodes well for their pending full length. Thrash masters Population Reduction should roam the streets of Tinseltown forcibly tattooing the title of “Real Zombies Don’t Run” on assorted Hollywood execs’ noggin. Marion Barry sound like Apartment 213 clones and Apartment 213 sound a lot like Apartment 213 as well. Septic Surge’s noise holocaust is exquisite, combining classic Agoraphobic Nosebleed with weed drenched Man is the Bastard.
Though I’m calling bullshit on the lack of swastika cock-spewing Obamas in the art, I am happy to say the addition of Voetsek and Despise You add a welcome dose of estrogen to what had previously been largely a boys only club (Spoonful of Vicodin excepted).
To try to single out a song or two to give you a taste of this one would be futile, so I’m just going to turn it over to Deathgrindfreak who’s already agreed to share his copy with the world.
[Full disclosure: Population Reduction kindly provided me with a review copy.]

G&P review: Triac

Triac
Blue Rooom
Reptilian
With all due respect to my good friend Apoctosis, Baltimore is a shit hole. This may be my D.C. bias showing, but seriously, if you wanted to give Maryland an enema, Bal’mer is where you stick it, hon. John Waters and a world class aquarium cannot make up for the fact that pretty much every bit of sleaze and violence you saw on The Wire was true. Maybe it’s the disease, corruption and choking ozone that permeates the ironically named Charm City that powers local residents like Misery Index and Quills.
Like their contemporaries, Triac specialize in raging kidney shots that split the difference between grind and hardcore like Capitalist Casualties and Excruciating Terror ripping up the greatest basement show ever.
But Triac aren’t content to beat you in a foot race on Blue Room. Just about every hardcore band has that one sludgy song. You know that long ass one that usually comes toward the end of the album and cools everything out. Triac lightly skip over that landmine by liberally sprinkling down tempo bruisers in between Jake Cregger’s (the pickled nun’s anus that powered the recent Drugs of Faith demo) blast beats for a far more varied mugging.
Like Wellington or Unearthly Trance’s crustier scabs, downshifted Triac seem to relish working you over with a tube sock full of useless Sacajawea coins. David Lynch-referencing (grok the distorted Dennis Hopper mug on the cover) almost-title-track “In the Blue Room” rides an oily tide of ringing Neurosis notes – those high, piercing wails that have served the San Franciscan treats so well over the years. “Isolation Tank” sways from creeping insanity to full psychotic break with the same emotional fragility that elevates Trap Them’s punch.
I can’t fathom why anyone would voluntarily live in Baltimore, but like Unsane and the Bowery, Triac manage to channel their environment crafting a soundtrack that speaks to their surroundings.

[Full disclosure: Jake Cregger kindly passed along a review copy.]