It’s the Vinyl Countdown

*cue triumphant slab of melted Havarti Swedish keyboard rock goodness*
I have written many times of my turntable woes: two record players sitting around my house broken while dozens of wonderful vinyl-only albums go whizzing by me. But you may have noticed lately, I’ve been digging out my flat plastic goodies. Given some impetus from the nice people at Forcefield Records, who sent me a care package full of EPs and LPs, I’ve finally gotten off my fat ass and fixed one of my turntables. So for the last few months I’ve been giddily getting caught up with all of the year’s vinyl releases that I had missed. And oh has 2009 been ever so kind.
(And yes, I know Havarti is Danish and not Swedish. So, bakdafuggup.)

G&P DVD Review: Enemy Soil

Enemy Soil

Smashes the State Live

Selfmadegod

As a live DVD, Enemy Soil’s Smashes the State Live compilation is a fairly average collection of homebrew footage of the seminal Virginia grind-go-round. Despite largely being shot by hand-held video cameras in the finer rec center gyms and school hallways of Maryland, D.C. and Virginia as well as in a choice Canadian basement, the video quality (edited down in spots) is consistently clear and the sound is surprisingly robust for the amateur (not an insult) quality videography. In an era of multi-camera, perfectly edited concert footage DVDs that look more like MTV promos than a genuine recreation of a metal experience, that atavism refreshing.

While the DVD as a video experience is a solid if average product, the moment of revelation came when I realized there is nary a drum machine on Smashes the State Live. As someone who has only experience the band on CD and has always compartmentalized them as the historical antecedents of the drum machine grind movement, it’s an epiphany. Instead, a pre-Pig Destroyer Brian Harvey mans the throne for the bulk of the performances. It forced me to zero in on the human element of Enemy Soil: a young J.R. Hayes demonstrating his maniacal magnetism well before he earned his high school diploma, Omid Yamini (of later Battletorn fame – a connection I had not previously made; one of the City of Caterpillar guys also played a prominent role) and his ominous, burbling bass assault and of course the chronological creep of stickers on band mainstay Richard Johnson’s Warlock. Think of it as the ghost behind the machine. Though my pulse does the cha-cha at the thought of 1,000-bpm mechanical percussion, it was that human element that truly powered Enemy Soil despite its chimerical line up over the years. Seeing them live sans mechanical accompaniment only reinforces that realization.

How much you’ll get out of Smashes the State Live will be directly proportional to your attachment to the band and its legacy. Like Johnson said at their 2001 reunion show in New York, “For better or for worse, we’re Enemy Soil.”

That you were; turns out I hardly knew ye.

[Full disclosure: Richard Johnson kindly sent me a copy].

Happy Blogaversary to Me (and all of you)

Yesterday was the blogaversary 'round these parts.
In light of that I want to thank anyone who's clicked a link, dropped a comment or contributed to the really awesome conversations that have been developing around here in the last year. You ladies and gentlemen have contributed to some truly fascinating discussions that have helped me not only refine my thoughts, but often that challenge my own thinking on this funny little critter we call grindcore.
And as with last year, a look back at the whole idea that got me blogging in the first place.

Two years in, where is Grind and Punishment going? Well, now you can all look forward to my terrible twos.

Characterized by toddlers being negative about most things and often saying 'no', the terrible twos may also find your toddler having frequent mood changes and temper tantrums.

To help you cope with this normal stage in your child's development, you should always remember that your child isn't trying to be defiant or rebellious on purpose. He is just trying to express his growing independence and doesn't have the language skills to easily express his needs. This can also be the reason why your toddler frequently gets frustrated and resorts to hitting, biting, and temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way.

Forget what I said about all that simple joy stuff; this sounds like way more fun.

G&P Review: Gorod

Gorod
Process of a New Decline
Willowtip
According to French metallions Gorod’s cosmology, an advanced extra-terrestrial species known as the Chaosmongers the Minarians come to Earth with the intention of bursting through Dimension Hatross enslaving and exploiting humanity after first guiding them through an evolutionary “autodestruction phase.” Somewhere in all that an alien ambassador named Soracle, the shadowy Obsequim Minaris society and some guy named Adam play prominent parts. Are you lost? Yeah, me too. I’ll just assume in the end we find out it’s a cookbook!!1! (Fun random fact, Richard Kiel of James Bond Jaws fame played one of the aliens in that episode.)
Mockery aside, Gorod’s third album of sci fi encrusted technical metal shenanigans hits all the right calculus-core equations required of the genre. The songs skitter like a chunk of butter dropped into a ripping hot skillet, refusing to settle on any single riff or movement for long but rather slide and splatter around you. A song like “Programmers of Decline” hops about between fragments of riffs like nanoscale robot fleas.
Gorod are at their best when they blithely skip away from tech metal convention. Opener “Disavow Your God” busts out a transcendent melody right before the two minute mark that glances off the song’ more protein packed sections is easily Process of a New Decline’s highlight. After your obligatory Martian invader of the Theremin-style opening, “The Path” veers into almost gothic and *gasp* poppy bridge that bounces cleaner vocals off of FXed ad astra guitars in a pairing that harkens back to Dark Tranquility circa Haven. Ditto with “Watershed,” which warps into delicate alien arias that highlight not only Gorod’s obvious technical mastery but the always elusive songwriting craft as well. That may be Gorod’s strongest point. Tech metal is custom crafted for self indulgence but Process of a New Decline shows Gorod know how to ruthlessly edit out the frippery when a song like the relatively straightforward “Splinters of Life.”
Tech metal isn’t my thing but I can appreciate the craft and artistry that went into Process of a New Decline. While it will definitely set the graphing calculator set aflame with passion, I just don’t see it converting outsiders like me.

[Full disclosure: Willowtip provided me with a review copy.]

Blast(beat) from the Past: Kiss the Cynic

Kiss the Cynic

Kiss the Cynic

Slob

2002

Kiss the Cynic open with a circle pit pep rally chant, close with a phone sex operator turned promotional gimmick and detour through Midwestern-themed sexual deviancy somewhere around the middle of this EP, their only output to date. Post-Luddite Clone, Andy Cummings and bassist Kevin Hannum reunited for a more straightforward metallic hardcore bruising band in Kiss the Cynic.

Not as metallic and technically deft as Luddite Clone, Hannum remains one of the most unsung bassists in hardcore and his busy, contortionist playing is once again the highlight of his band. Vocally, Cummings still boasts an impressive croak as he rants and seethes his way through “Bring Out Your Dead.” Guitarists K. Walsh and A. Lynch tread the left hand path with Entombed-thick guitars on “Chicago Hotplate” and “…And the Number One Video in America” approaches the near-grind tempos that powered Luddite Clone. However, Kiss the Cynic lack the laser-guided velociraptor combination of technical precision and barbarian brutality that elevated Luddite Clone above the chugging masses. However, Kiss the Cynic turned out a solid, weighty bit of basement show brutality and snotty punk sarcasm.

Kiss the Cynic announced a new album, Making Friends Made Easy, way back in 2007 and they haven’t logged in to their MySpace page in over a year, so it’s safe to say this band, like its predecessor, is gone too soon.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Luddite Clone

Luddite Clone
The Arsonist and the Architect
Cyberdine 243/Relapse
2000
Shortly after bargain basement Frankenstein Dr. Weird unleashed anthropomorphic fast food on New Jersey, he moved on to his next project: a cutting edge metallic hardcore band cobbled together from leftover pieces of Human Remains, Creation is Crucifixion and Unruh, creating a post-singularity robot fighting league killbot. Like those contemporaries (as well as Burnt by the Sun with whom they shared a split), Luddite Clone packed grind intensity, death metal heft and hardcore passion into one package long before all that shit became a tiresome cliché. Like those other bands, Luddite Clone never skimped on the technical prowess, particularly unsung secret weapon Kevin Hannum whose tortuous, jazz-speckled bass brings both depth focus to the band.
“Oratory of a Jigsaw” is Dark City-sampling machine shop full of power drills riffs boring through your skull to excoriate the sweetmeats beyond while frontman Andy Cummings does his spittle-flecked R. Lee Ermey impersonation over your shoulder. And the other five songs are just as composed and powerful. “Circle Template” hovers and pecks like the marauding seagulls from The Birds, Andrew Shearer and Ian Berkowitz’s guitars crest against the whitewater tug of Bob Raf’s drums on “Arthropod” and “The Contortionist” wracks bone and tendon like David Blaine against a backdrop of Hannum’s bebop bass and record scratch breakdowns.
This was an EP so good Relapse immediate snapped it up and widely reissued it. Unfortunately, Luddite Clone flared like a supernova in 2000, issuing both The Arsonist and the Architect and their split with Burnt by the Sun. But like a solar implosion, the band quickly fizzled. A split live album with The Esoteric (the ex-Coalesce one not the doom one), chronicling Luddite Clone’s final show at CBGB’s, was the band’s epitaph in 2001.

G&P Review: Attack of the Mad Axeman

Attack of the Mad Axeman
Scumdogs of the Forest
Scrotum Jus
I spent the bulk of my teen years in Germany without ever picking up the language because pretty much every European on the planet has a better grasp of English than I do. So I don’t know what the German word for “sophomore slump” would be, but I imagine it’s one of those impressively polysyllabic compound monstrosities at which the Teutonic tongue excels. I bet Attack of the Mad Axeman don’t know it either because the cosplay crusaders took everything that made 2007’s Grind the Enimal awesome, and belying their animal rights motif, chained it in the back yard, tazed it into submission and subjected it to ruthless experiments involving forced injections of Kill the Client extract for second album Scumdogs of the Forest.
In case the subliminal messages in “Grind, Grind, Grind!” and “”I Like Bands” didn’t make it through, Attack of the Mad Axeman love to grind and grind like bastards they do. There’s a scything riff that mows through “16 Fauste Fur Ein Halleluja,” miraculously cleaving the concrete-density guitar and bass. And “Elefantophobia II” plays like an audio book on fast forward recounting of Hannibal’s pachyderm trek over the Alps. Axeman also seem intent on goring metal’s sacred cows, from the GWAR-spoofing album title through songs like “Morbider Angler,” which is actually about fishing, and “Squirrel vs. Glen Benton,” a subtle brew of blunt force brutality and Sciuridae dexterity that takes aim at the infamous squirrel shooting incident.
Everything about Scumdogs of the Forest from the perfectly balanced but still sandpapery production through the single minded performances and fat-free songwriting sees grind’s favorite furries elevating an already impressive game. This should be the album that takes the focus off the band’s goofy getups and gets it back on the music where it deservedly belongs.