G&P Review: Hayaino Daisuki

Hayaino Daisuki
Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell… Or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki
Hydra Head
In an era of vaporizing record sales (oh, you naughty downloaders, you know who you are) and general economic malaise, the idea of packaging a four song, 12 minute EP in a DVD case is downright baroque in its conspicuous consumption. Never mind Hydra Head plunking down the cash for a 20 page zine-style liner package that includes a multi-page cartoon, doll making instructions (wait, what?) and a quickie interview with Cephalochromoscope’s own Davydd Grimm. Hell, the ink just to print that mouthful of a title would probably blow most bands’ art budgets. But Hayaino Daisuki’s whole shtick is a celebration of exuberant excess. For starters, this little fucker is mastered exceptionally loud, and Matsubara’s songwriting M.O. seems to be geared toward the kind of ADD people who wish Slayer would trim the verse and chorus fat from the epically overlong Reign in Blood and get straight to the shredding.
What’s most surprising from a band fronted by Jon friggen Chang is how the vocals are the single most improved element of the package. The familiar tonsil (testicle?) twisting scream still dominates, but Chang et al have introduced more variety to complement the EP’s shifting moods. “Kirei” has a startlingly feminine touch that adds an unexpected dimension to its thrash assault while “Shibito” has a throaty, alleyway pervent come-on that sounds outright villainous.

Hayaino Daisuki – “Shibito”

For all the goofball trappings, Hayaino Daisuki are deadly serious about their craft and the game has been upped again. This just slays every teenaged wannabe retro thrash band surfing eBay for retro white high tops.
When last we heard from Hayaino Daisuki they were playing John the Baptist to the advent of grindcore messiahs Gridlink. Will the same revelatory process take place in 2010 with the impending Orphan?

And Now a Word from Julie Andrews

Consider yourselves lucky because I was about this close to embedding a video of Julie Andrews belting out "A Few of My Favorite Things," but I vomited up my lower intestine in the process. While I always like to see how far I can push all of you before you come running with pitchforks and torches, that was a bit much, even for me.
But there really is a reason for this treacley trip into pure falseness, I swear. See, I’ve been pondering the notion of favorites lately. While on a recent Dostoevsky binge I pretty much cemented what I’ve always kinda subconsciously known: dude’s probably my favorite writer and The Brothers Karamazov is probably my favorite book. Probably. For right now.
I’ve never been the kind of person who has a favorite band or favorite song. In fact, sitting here typing this right now I couldn’t tell you what my favorite band is. Napalm Death? I own more albums by them than anyone else in my collection. Discordance Axis? Certainly one of my most played. Dead Kennedys? Probably been consistently listening to them longer than anyone else.
But I can’t seem to pin it down because my mood will shift and I'll go endlessly listen to something else instead. I recently destroyed Who's My Saviour for about three weeks straight. That seems to be the key. I have a lot of favorite bands and a ton of favorite songs. It just depends on what mood you catch me in. So dragging together 20 or so of my favorite songs into a bizarre musical biography for shits and giggles, I was struck by what those moods say about me. First, I realize just how much of a sucker I am for songs with high, piercing, ringing guitar tones in them. (Note to bands who ask for reviews: I’m a sucker for high, piercing, ringing guitars tones; include those in your song and I’ll probably drool over myself writing a review.)
That wasn’t much of a surprise, but the emotional content of those songs. I consider myself a fairly phlegmatic person; not much ever really bothers me. So why do so many of my favorite songs deal with anxiety, unease, confusion and dislocation. Based on this playlist, it’s like I’m some moody Twilight emo boy. Pink Floyd’s tempus fugit anthem “Time,” Jesu’s anxiety-riddled “Tired of Me” and the Weakerthan’s charmingly awkward “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” don’t do much to bolster my self-image. Even Bad Religion’s fuck the world fireball “Do What You Want” smacks of overcompensating bravado now. Then there’s the moments of transcendent beauty: close your eyes when Anneke van Giersbergen sings “deprive of sleep/we jump into the deep” on “Great Ocean Road.” If the note she hits on the word “deep” doesn’t send shivers through your soul, then you’re probably not breathing. In fact, that should be the standard gom jabbar to separate humanity from plankton and idiots who wear Tapout shirts. And though they may be a doddering joke now, the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” never fails to get to me.
And just to keep you from pulling my tr00 card, Sepultura’s “Mass Hypnosis” from the greatest thrash album ever: Beneath the Remains.
So now I’m curious: what is your favorite band or song and why? How can you narrow it down to just one , and what do you think your choice says about you?

Meanwhile, feel free to psychoanalyze my choices here.

Discordance Axis – “Castration Rite”
Rolling Stones – “Gimme Shelter”
His Hero is Gone – “Like Weeds”
The Gathering – “Great Ocean Road”
Pink Floyd – “Time”
Jesu – “Tired of Me”
Sepultura – “Mass Hypnosis”
Helmet – “Sinatra”
Botch – “C. Thomas Howell as the ‘Soul Man’”
Weakerthans – “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open”
Clash – “Spanish Bombs”
Dicks – “Shit on Me”
Napalm Death – “Siege of Power”
Bad Brains – “I”
Neurosis – “Stones from the Sky”
Anodyne – “Philosophy of Failure”
Bad Religion – “Do What You Want”
Nasum – “The Final Sleep”
Who’s My Saviour – “Save Your Breath”

Suck It, Jay-Z: Defeatist's Empire State of Grind

With a population density of 26,403 people per square mile – 66,940 people per square mile in Manhattan alone – that’s a lot of potentially homicidal motherfuckers stacked on top of each other in New York City. New Yorkers walk fast, they talk fast and they really don’t have time for your bullshit. Combine all that with near legendary (though in my experience, highly exaggerated) animosity for everyone else around them and Hells Kitchen up to Harlem should just be exploding with blastbeat freaks with no regard for humanity. Though the city’s macho strut has brought the world NYDM and NYHC there seems be a palpable lack of NYGC (and yes, Zmaj has already poked some holes in this hypothesis). The city’s leading lights, Disassociate and ASRA are both moribund. In fact, the region’s best grindcore has come from a bunch of bridge and tunnel types from Jersey. Fucking Jersey!
So I put the question to Aaron Nichols, grizzled vet of upstaters Kalibas and now fronting last men standing Defeatist: What’s up with New York grind?
“NYC is pretty fucked up and splintered, the cliques get split up amongst boroughs, styles or just bands,” Nichols said. “There are little pockets that erupt here and there but it's usually based on being in a scene as opposed to being into the music. More than a few times I've been at a show and not recognized any of the people attending and will probably never see them again. I'm actually surprised any scenes survive at all because it's so hard to even keep a band together here. Every hardship any band I've been in before is multiplied significantly just by living here, from expenses to scheduling to transportation. Most bands here seem to be more interested in partying and spreading their herpes than anything, which is probably the opposite reaction we would inspire. As a transplant to NY there was definitely an adjustment period living in such an oppressive environment and it had an impact on me but I think
that has come out through lyrics more than the music.”
But as some syphilitic German loudmouth once put it: what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Which is a pretty epigrammatic summation of Defeatist’s full length debut The Sixth Extinction. Building on paleontologists Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup’s research in the cyclical nature of extinction events approximately every 26 million years. Given the last extinction event in their cycle was the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event about 65 million years ago, we’re a tad overdue. But Nichols is banking on humanity’s endless ingenuity for self destruction to right the scales.
“I would go further than that and define humanity as the extinction itself,” Nichols said. “Niles Eldredge breaks down the phases of the Sixth Extinction into two phases, the dispersion of humans across the planet and the development of human agriculture. It is the human-centric view that the next extinction is something that will happen to us as opposed to something we have caused. None of this is any sort of condemnation, just fulfilling human nature. The idea of accepting fault is more appealing to me than the actual event I guess because that's just inevitable, at least I hope it is.”
That sense of inevitability is what I’d call the defining feature of Defeatist’s music. Each album has been stamped by Nichol’s distinctive iconography of gritty black and white visions of death. Skulls and skeletons abound. Life does not seep in through any crack in Defeatist’s bleak world view.
“I'm just starting to realize that there is an aesthetic theme emerging in the artwork,” he said. “Really it's nothing any deeper than my love for fucked up punk aesthetics but I do think the Momento Mori suggestion has some validity. I will almost always go for a shitty cut and paste layout over a high production full color painting. Growing up, I always preferred black and white comics over four color mainstream books too. It's completely subjective though because I'm heavy into work from Hipgnosis or Roger Dean too. I guess influences in this world would be Winston Smith, Pushead, Sakevi, Gee Vaucher, and the record covers that always stand out to me are the first Killing Joke record and Napalm Death Scum.”
While he has developed a distinct aesthetic for the band, Nichols said he still tries to keep the art anchored in Defeatist’s lyrical conceits. Luckily the words are just as bleak and the layouts.
“Conceptually, it's different each time but I usually only have a vague idea of where to start but somewhere in the process something will emerge that I wouldn't have thought of. Sometimes the art is a starting point, I had the front cover for this new LP for a while but the rest of the layout was a struggle. To me the whole point of the lyrics is to conjure visuals so I hope the layout will support that.”
Given the 2008 econo-pocalypse made a mockery of whatever hilarious fever dream I ever had of one day retiring and Defeatist are convinced we’re inevitably going to wipe ourselves out anyway, I asked Nichols whether I should bother building up that 401k again or just empty it out and carpe that diem.
“Do apocalypse kooks have retirement plans?” he said.

G&P Review: Defeatist

Defeatist
Sixth Extinction
Willowtip
With an album title that references paleontologists Sepkoski and Raup’s five major extinction events, New York’s Defeatist seem intent on hurrying along the evolutionary process with their proper full length debut, Sixth Extinction. It’s an album of grindcore blistering and noise rock corner sniping that relentlessly pummels its victim, probing for any chink in your survival skills. The piano wire garrote of “Heresy Delusion” fluidly transitions into the soft tissue trauma of “Fall in Line” like a Tyrannosaurus Rex-themed kata. The chumming thrum of “Death Holds Her Brood” sees its doomed thread spooled back in two songs later on “Ways of Weakness” and the spontaneous, shapeless noise whiteout of “Man’s Inhumanity to Man” will be immediately, comfortingly familiar to anyone who ever worshipped at the altar of Anodyne, where Defeatist’s rhythm section previously coalesced. Joel Stalling has turned in so many tooth chippingly awesome drum performances to date I almost forget just how much of a world eating badass he really is, particularly lock in with long time bass consort Joshua Scott and ex-Kalibas guitarist Aaron Nichols.
The twisty, askew stumble of “Without Will” is a wrenched amalgam of noise rock angularity and grindcore acceleration that succinctly encapsulates the Defeatist milieu, ram-rodding square peg elements of their prior efforts into grindcore’s humble round hole.

Defeatist – “Without Will”

I have only two complaints and they’re relatively mild. First, the production on Sixth Extinction is feels the slightest bit duller than some of the tracks on Sharp Blade Sinks Deep into Dull Minds. While it’s particularly noticeable when you listen to them back to back, it’s far from a deal breaker. The second is one I’ve raised before: I keep waiting for Nichols to widen his vocal vista. Far too many of the songs feel trapped in a Rarr, rarr, rarr, rarr; Rarr, rarr, rarr, rarr trap that saps the dynamism of the music itself. But that’s so hard to focus on when a hungry horde of musical velociraptors are questioning your very fitness to survive.

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

G&P Review: Infanticide

Infanticide
From Our Cold, Dead Hands
Willowtip
Sweden’s Infanticide make me want to run through the ObGyn unit of my local hospital with a razor honed Wustof gutting pregnant chicks. Or maybe just ordering a really nice veal parmesan. Either way some fetal blob of barely developed mammal protein will have a bad day with From Our Cold, Dead Hands providing the perfect soundtrack. As your grindcore sommelier, I’d recommend pairing Infanticide with a nice selection from Deathbound because like those ferocious Finns, the Swedes crust their grindcore with a seasoned panko rind of guttural death metal heft, more strategically deploying the blastbeats than their contemporaries.
You take those death metal elements to the grill almost immediately as “Domestic Warfare” scales back the throttle for 75 seconds of Swede death loom before the two beat eruptions place things squarely back in the realm of grind. It’s those kinds of moments – like the way The Fourth Crusade gets a 21st Century panzer sheen on the stunning “Shock and Awe” – that provide tension and dynamism against From Our Cold, Dead Hands’ suitably clanking production.

Infanticide – “Shock and Awe”

But fear not, for all the downbeat chug, those are just the crusted protrusions in Infanticide’s grind freakery. “Militant Resentment” brings all the charm of a rusted dental drill cracking open an abscessed tooth, “A Worse Today” brings the punk banging by way of Entombed and “Crisis Point” is pure cluster bomb annihilation. There's not a damn thing here that hasn't been a few dozen times before, but for what it's worth, Infanticide hit all the comfortable pressure points. You can pry this one … wait for it … from my cold, dead hands.
[Ed’s note: I’m so very, very sorry.]

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

Media Blitz! Media Blitz!

Just a quick word about the media player situation.
First, thanks to everyone who pointed out it's not working. I don't know why it stopped. Bad media player. It's a shame because I actually liked this one.
So yes, I'm actively trying to get it resolved. However, there's just one problem. I seem to have ... umm... lost it. You see, I tacked the Java script for it on to a random post as a trial and I can't seem to find it anymore. I'm still going through the code for old posts looking for it. If you happen to see a media player script running around here, please let me know. It's about *this* tall with brown fur and wagging tail. It really is a nice media player and I wish it would come home.

Meanwhile, I'm open to suggestions from those of you who care. While I'm generally protective of my little sandbox here, I do want to the experience to be enjoyable and functional from your end as well. In the meantime, I will still try to make one song per album available as a download. Not the most efficient method for a lot of you, but that's the best I can do for the time being. I've tried and rejected things like the Google media player because I'm lazy and really, really hate dicking with HTML every time I want to post. But if you have a system that works for you (keeping in mind I'll always go with the path of least resistance), pass it along and I'll give it a shot.

In the meantime, thanks for participating and thanks for your patience.

G&P Review: Wormrot 2: Electric Boogaloo

Wormrot
Abuse
Earache (reissue)
In a totally unexpected and extremely gracious move, Digby Pearson recently contacted me (even after I vented my spleen) and offered me one of the first copies of the reissue of Wormrot’s Abuse to thank me for the minor role I played in bringing the band to Earache’s attention.
So how does the two disc reissue of an album that was bruited and hailed by pretty much every one of us as one the single most essential albums of 2009 (Flesh Monolith, tenth? Seriously? What the fuck, man?) fare in the hands of a historic metal powerhouse that has, let's say, gotten a more mixed reaction from fans of late?
Not much has changed at first blush. While the packaging is largely intact – the colors and contrast have been punched up a tad – there is a hilariously bad Photoshop job in the thank you list where “Aziz from Scrotum Jus” has been swapped out for “Digby and Earache Records” in a glaringly different font.
Packaging chicanery aside, Earache wisely didn’t tinker with the album itself. Abuse still sounds like proctology with a block of Semtex. Name your favorite grind album of the last five years and Abuse shits down its throat and make its like it.
The real selling point for this version will be the chance to see just how stupid these Singaporeans were born because Earache has collected the bulk of the band’s demo, splits and EPs and, fittingly, an Insect Warfare Cover (“Evolved into Obliteration”) on the second disc. Now I know most of you have probably already downloaded every single one of these, but the disc also collects a handful of previously unreleased tracks, which just didn’t make the Abuse cut. “Rapid Abortions of Ridiculous proportions” filters the band’s now-established sound through Converge’s “The Saddest Day” and Alice in Chains’ Dirt, offering another datum that the band’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover was not some cheap toss away bit of hipster irony.

Wormrot – “Rapid Abortions of Ridiculous Proportions” [Due to a sequencing error, the song will be mislabeled when you d/l]

Having all this material in one convenient package makes for a fascinating historical document. The songs are not as explosive in their larval stages, but they also show Wormot were on to something profound from their first demo in 2007. “Condemnation,” in particular, is a scorcher and paragon of compact songwriting.
Even when the older tracks don’t reach the Abuse pinnacle, that same flailing and uncontrollable sense of abandon energizes every single note. Abuse was no accident. Wormrot are the real shit.
Go buy this shit. Again.

[Full disclosure: I'm special and Earache likes me more than you. Neener, neener.]