Grind in Rewind 2013

Punctuality has never been my strong point, but I thought I’d get ahead of the curve this year and put out my year end list a bit early. Yay me.
This year, in particular, I have to thank all the cool bands and labels who were generous enough to share their music with me. Since the advent of the Lil Grinder, my discretionary music buying budget has been slashed to zero. So more than ever I’m reliant upon the kindness of strangers. And this year strangers had some pretty damn good taste. Let’s get down to it.

10. Dead Church/Suffering Mind
Split
7 Degrees
Don’t get the wrong idea. The only thing that puts this split down at number 10 is the fact that it’s just one song from each band. But sweet holy fucking Shiva on a shingle, those two songs are absolute humdingers. Suffering Mind have been operating at an extremely high level for quite a few years now, but “War Street/Wall Street” may be the most perfect distillation of the Polish band’s polish and promise that I’ve ever heard. It’s just a perfect little grind tune. Flipside, Dead Church match Suffering Mind’s intensity, chewing through “I Want Nothing” like Al Pacino with an electric scenery gnawing machine powered by cocaine and incinerated copies of Godfather Part 3. Normally, one song from a band is not worth the wax it occupies, but this split is definitely the exception.

9. Detroit
Reality Denied
Grindcore Karaoke
Detroit have been on a roll recently and Reality Denied just keeps that trend trucking like one of the diesel huffing monstrosities churned out by their namesake city. The album may start with “False” but Detroit remains true: loose and spastic and flailing with the abandon of youth. Every song is hewed from the molds established by Napalm Death and Capitalist Casualties, but they’re played with an aplomb that keep that from being merely derivative. There’s a sincerity of focus that elevates them beyond their humble ambitions.

8. Rotten Sound
Species at War
Relapse
Just when I’d accepted that Rotten Sound’s Murderworks/Exit days were behind them and they were in more of a fast crust punk mold, the Finns start banging out awesome EPs that capture the vibe of their earliest material. Species at War was another great short effort, a snarling little bugbear of bad attitude and unrelenting pessimism. Rotten Sound sound ripped to the gills on humanity’s self-inflicted bullshit and they’re ready to push the button to end it all. The apocalypse has never sounded so upbeat.

7. Sacridose
Anxiety Tremors
Financial Ruin/Bandcamp
Cellgraft offshoot Sacridose sound like the former crossed up with a soupcon of Cloud Rat’s fast hardcore rampage. It’s a winning combination. Plus they cover Rudimentary Peni. Always a bonus. That aside, their original material is a shattered glass tornado of whirling aggression and vertiginous blasting twists. It’s lean and it’s mean and it’s got a hardcore soul that keeps it from being too easily tagged as Cellgraft resurgent.

6. Slavestate 641A
Masochist
Grindcore Karaoke/Name Like His Master
This is not grind in the musical sense. It’s grind in the tectonic sense. It’s the slow motion smashing of giant plates of earth, buckling and crumbling under the pressure of uncompromising repetition. Born from Robocop, who helped lead the power violence resurgence, Slavestate 641A pull much the same trick on classic Godflesh and Swans, reinvigorating heavy as fuck slow motion misery that crawls along at a stumble step. It’s death by degrees and it’s demanding but the payoff is emotionally satisfying and enervating. It take it that’s how masochism is supposed to work.

5. Gowl
Buzzbox
Self Released
Gowl raged right out of nowhere (i.e. Connecticut) in 2013, leaving a smoldering nuclear crater of irradiated awesomeness in their too brief wake. The onomatopoeitic Buzzbox lives up to its name with a snarling tiptoe through Backslider’s garden, which is planted high with amp buzz and clanking snare. It’s a glorious little cacophony that doesn’t offer too much in the way of originality, but it’s delivered with bravado and abandon. That’s really all I ask.

4. Wake
False
7 Degrees/Handshake Inc.
Wake have been churning out amazing records with such regularity now that it’s almost easy to take them for granted. False is another immaculate entry into their already enviable discography. Its chief success is corralling together another 11 songs that each have their own voice and personality and then having the confidence to let the songs breathe and stake out their own space. Wake haven’t stumbled yet so False makes me truly eager to hear what the Canadians churn out next.

3. Sick/Tired
King of Dirt
Cowabunga
King of Dirt worships at the altar pure noise. Noisecore has a special place in my heart and Sick/Tired pluck at each and every string. It’s a chaotic blast of everything that makes grind great. Even the ending on the slow noise song cliché takes on a new vitality at their twisted behest. It’s noisy, angular and strikes with a concussive force. And I keep coming back for more. This is definitely one of my most listened albums in 2013 and it’s still a part of my regular musical rotation. Their follow up EP is just as badass.

2. Who’s My Savior
Wall of Sickness
7 Degrees
Look, I’ve been raving about Who’s My Saviour for years now. I think Glasgow Smile is a certified fucking classic. So I don’t know how much more I need to say to them. Why aren’t you listening to this shit right this fucking minute? Because Wall of Sickness is another brilliant slice of twisted grind from the German trio, who refuse to be bound by grindcore convention but never leave their roots too far behind. Wall of Sickness is an amazing slow build EP that boasts some of Who’s My Saviour’s catchiest songs and these guys excel at writing a memorable grind hook.

1. Cloud Rat

Moksha

IFB/Halo of Flies/React With Protest/7 Degrees
I called this one back in January. I stand by it 11 months later. Simply put, there has not been another album that comes close to Moksha’s transformative emotional experience this year. Cloud Rat sneak in His Hero is Gone melody and a Neil Young cover as part of the most unabashedly emotional and riveting album in recent memory. Moksha is harrowing in its honesty and plaintive in its frustrated sincerity. No matter how bleak life gets, Cloud Rat still strive for the light of hope. Madison absolutely brought it this album, screaming her soul out to make Moksha the standout musical experience that it is.

G&P Review: Who's My Saviour

Who’s My Saviour
Wall of Sickness
7 Degrees
Discussing the difference between surprise and suspense, Alfred Hitchcock said suspense is telling the audience a bomb under the table will go off in five minutes and then watching ordinary people obliviously talk about baseball. He could just as easily put on the opening sequence from Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil. It’s an unbroken tracking shot that follows a car with a bomb hidden in its trunk as it wends its way through narrow Mexican streets filled with tourists and revelers on its way to the American border. After building up the excruciating tension, that the bomb explodes off screen may be the most jarring part of the shot.
A bomb will go off at the end of Wall of Sickness.
In fact, the first three songs are united by a rhythmic metallic clanking that sounds almost like a detonator ticking away in a car trunk. Who’s My Saviour savor that tension while flirting with restraint. The German trio’s prior album, Glasgow Smile, was a hallucinogenic thrill ride of off kilter riffing and concussive artistry, pushing grindcore’s dynamics and sneaking in sly melodies without ever sacrificing the headlong rush that makes it work. If there’s an album that truly embodies the trope of the overlooked masterpiece, Glasgow Smile was it.
But latest EP Wall of Sickness toys with you by playing things relatively straight at first, casually building up the little layers that make their songs interdimensional portals of sonic wonder and mystery.  “Intro” is all queasy seasick riffing at Quaalude speeds over a sample of Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuano ripping into a panel of bank presidents who came hat in hand to Congress looking for a bailout. From the outset, Wall of Sickness is a fraught record that oozes the malaise of our current economic implosion. The first few songs are fast-fingered grind rushes that still drip with technical acumen in service of surgical strikes at the heart of a faltering society. These are also some of Who’s My Saviour’s most tuneful efforts; “Hemingway” and “This World Belongs to Us” practically beg for the sing along treatment. “Pillbox” slithers with a slimy sleaze before the song is devoured by a colony of army ants on the warpath.
But there’s a bomb at the end of this EP. The fuse gets lit somewhere around sixth song “Niere Kopf” as the wonted angularity and ambition start bleeding through Who’s My Saviour’s pores. The preceding five tracks were only intended to tenderize your mind to let their multidimensional daggers slide in all the more easily. The exuberant songwriting explosion bombs out of final track “Weedeater,” which builds a wall of stoner drone feedback into cyclopean citadels of circular riff insanity every bit as obsessive as the finest moments of “Shizo” or “When Magic Turns into Black Plague” on Glasgow Smile.
After my first listen to Wall of Sickness, I was disappointed. I thought Who’s My Saviour had sacrificed the quintessence that made them special. That changed a dozen listens later (all in the same afternoon, on endless repeat, I must add). Turns out I was too busy listening to the baseball discussion and not paying nearly enough attention to that bomb under the table.

[Full disclosure: 7 Degrees sent me a download.]