Demo-lition Derby: God Harvest

God Harvest
Demo
An eminent 20th Century philosopher, one Mr. Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, once posed the query: “Bass – how low can you go?” Florida’s God Harvest have responded with a hearty “Challenge Accepted.”
Over six songs that evolve from punchy grindy to moshy hardcorey, God Harvest spelunk the lower registers of musical notation where Vulgar Pigeons and Catheter used to hang out. All the components of the band – the Pete Pontikoff barking, slashing guitars and just sub-blast beat drumming – all strive for the singular purpose of knocking you over on your ass, but they all get gnawed away by the sledge hammer bass, which makes this one of the more distinctive demos this year. The songs themselves are in two distinct phases, the first three are tighter blasters while the second half gets looser, allowing the band’s musical ideas more room to breathe. However, even the grindier songs feel much longer – in a good way. They’re chock-a-block with shifty riffing or the odd vocal sideswipe that gives each tune a sense of chameleonic movement and deliberate purpose. That means while God Harvest doesn’t venture too far afield into grind incognita, the demo also doesn’t get boring either. For a band’s first effort, that’s pretty much all I ask. You can check it out here.

Anti Homophobe-nym

Obviously, Wormrot has been much on my mind lately as I prepared my review for Dirge, which also entailed spending several intense hours with Abuse. But it wasn’t until I sat down with the Abusing the World DVD that accompanies Dirge that something occurred to me: How are you supposed to pronounce Abuse?
My mind automatically read the title as Ab-yoos. But it could also be pronounced Ab-yooz.
How you pronounce it? And does it make a difference. Oh sure, I could just ask the band how they intended it, but that would spare me the fun of drastically overthinking this.
Ab-yoos, to me, implies passivity. It is something being inflicted upon Wormrot, which they must endure. However, ab-yooz is more active in nature. It suggests something the band would be doing unto others (not as they would like having done unto them).
As Spinal Tap so adroitly noted, it's that little turn at the end that makes all the difference.
Of course, I consulted the lyric sheet for some insight, but there is nothing like a title track to provide clarity. In fact, the word “abuse,” in either form, is not actually used in the lyrics. “Exterminate” gives us one past tense variation on the word: “Build your hate. Exterminate. Pitiful creep. Been abused.” That's all we have to go by and I'm not sure that's definitive. But that’s all we’ve got to go on.
I’m curious how you read the title and whether that your preferred pronunciation makes any difference to how you interpret the album, the lyrics or the music. Toss out your theories in the comments.
Fuckin’ homonyms, how do they work?

Grindcore Alphabet: S

Though E may be the most frequently used letter in English, S is apparently the most common letter in grindcore. Unlike that lazy, shiftless letter Q, S is bringing it big this week with a full 42 songs for your consumption. It's by far the single largest haul to be had of the whole alphabet.
As Melvin van Peebles would say, “Bad Assssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.”
Here’s your letter S mixtape: [Mediafire]

Sakatat – “Adim Adim Elerki” (Turkey)
Satellite Sleep – “Empty” (Australia)
Sulaco – “Cry Me a River” (United States)
Spinegrinder – “The Incineration of Julie” (United States)
Siege – “Life of Hate” (United States)
Structure of Lies – “Masters of Nothing” (United States)
Sylvester Stalline – “I Don’t Play to Fuck” (France)
S.O.B. – “Trapped in Cancer” (Japan)
Suffering Mind – “Wirus” (Poland)
Sarlacc – “Entombment of a Wookie” (United States)
Swarrrm – “Road” (Japan)
Squash Bowels – “Abhorrently Stinking Rich Man” (Poland)
StraightHate – “Ethnocide” (Greece)
Standing on a Floor of Bodies – “Gone the Way of All Flesh” (United States)
A Scanner Darkly – “The Man in the High Castle” (United States)
Sadis Euphoria – “Burning in Flesh” (United States)
Slight Slappers “My Reality and My Idea” (Japan)
Streetcleaner –“Scotch Knight” (United States)
Scrotum Grinder – “Untruth as Master Signifier” (United States)
Selfhate – “Zaraza” (Poland)
Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky – “A Path” (United States)
Sutek Conspiracy – “The Gospel According To” (United States)
Skarp – “Feed the Addiction” (United States)
Subcut – “Insanidad” (Brazil)
Skrupel – “Daily Boring” (Germany)
Slaughter of the Innocents – “Maelstrom of Chaos” (Germany)
Sewn Shut – “Smear of Destruction” (Sweden)
Sore Throat – “Horrendify and Kill” (England)
Spoonful of Vicodin – “Tapeworms in Punk, A Documentary” (United States)
Sayyadina – “Come Final Rest” (Sweden)
Splitter – “Markt For Livet” (Sweden)
Su19b – “Hateful Neglect” (Japan)
Spiral – “Tornade” (Japan)
Spazz – “Backpack Bonfire” (United States)
Shapes of Misery – “Mad Man’s Rampage” (Holland)
Shitstorm – “Paranoid Existence” (United States)
Sanity’s Dawn – “Fuck Your Sense of Life” (Germany)
Septic Surge – “Perculator” (Australia)
Superbad – “Isaac No Fuck, Isaac Make Love” (United States)
Strong Intention – “Without Conscience” (United States)
Social Infestation – “Some People Push Back” (United States)
Self Deconstruction – “The Anger Which I Wait For” (United States)

Total to date: 348 bands

Panic! At the Discography: Nasum

Grindcore is the petit four of punk and metal. It’s a delicacy best served in small amounts. That’s why when I asked you to name the best band working today, you overwhelmingly went for a group with a penchant for albums shorter than a Harvey Birdman episode. Given that you probably don’t spend as much time woodshopping a song like, say, “You Suffer,” as long as you would something by Atheist or Pestilence or some other technical guitar wanker, that means an average grind band can pretty much poop out a 7-inch’s worth of material a month if quality control isn't a high priority (*cough* Agathocles *cough*). And if your average grind band keeps at it long enough, inevitably somebody is going to step in to collect the far flung singles, splits, and 7-inchers into a massive discography album. But a discography is probably the worst format for grind ever conceived by the diabolical mind of Jesus for a whole host of reasons. So with that in mind, I’m going to periodically dig through my daunting stack of oversized grind compilations to talk about what works well and how they, unfortunately, go tragically wrong more often than not. I could think of no better way to inaugurate the new feature than with probably the gold standard for grindcore discographies.

Nasum
Grind Finale
Relapse
2006
Mieszko Talarczyk’s death during the 2004 Christmas tsunami was the tragic impetus both Relapse and drummer Anders Jakobson needed to get off their asses and finally realize the long simmering Nasum discography, which had been percolating for years under the title Blueprint for Extinction. Two years and a (welcome) name change later and Relapse handed us 152 tracks spread over two discs that spanned Nasum’s amazing career in the form of Grind Finale. Not only was it a tribute to one of the label’s most prolific (and likely most profitable) artists, but Grind Finale was an impressive bit of fan service and an incredible undertaking in its own right. Packaged in a book binding with a forward by metal historian and Decibel EiC Albert Mudrian and featuring extensive liner notes by Jakobson that illuminate all of the band’s non-album releases, Grind Finale is the discography by which every other collection should be judged. The songs, ordered chronologically, begin with the band’s earliest incarnation, before Talarczyk stepped to the mic or manned the mixing board to put his indelible stamp on every facet of Nasum’s identity. Beginning with the sampled secret of the band’s nasal nomenclature straight through the cast off bits that didn’t make their later albums, attentive grindcore archeologists will be able to piece together not only the band’s musical evolution but perhaps psychoanalyze its working methods. Though the non-album and bonus track bits are almost uniformly quality songs in their own right, with enough listens you begin to see why, for instance, the title track for masterwork Helvete got left on the cutting room floor. You sense how the band carefully managed not only the individual songs, but how their albums flowed and the emotional punctuation that delineated them. It’s just one more example of how Talarczyk and Jakobson and their rotating cast of supporting players were master craftsmen whose career was prematurely ended.
Grind Finale is such an impressive package that Relapse’s decision to cough up the slapdash live album Doombringer two years later looks shabby and tacky by comparison, a cheap cash in on a vital band’s legacy. But Grind Finale is a fitting monument to one of the finest grind practitioners to ever grace our stereos and an essential addition to any Nasum fan's collection. Or a great place for n00bs to get introduced to master technicians.

G&P Review: Wormrot

Wormrot
Dirge
Earache
Abuse – Wormrot’s out of nowhere, totally unexpected slab of staggering awesomeness (from Singafuckingpore of all places, ferchrissakes) – was a magical, transcendental moment in 2009 and touchstone for grindcore's future. It was like seeing Haley’s Comet, stumbling on Brigadoon or Brian Burke showing restraint and not blowing up the Maple Leafs’ lineup at the trading deadline: It just wasn’t the kind of thing you expected to see in your lifetime. And without any scene buzz in advance, nothing could prepare you for it.
While it may be unfair to them, everything Wormrot does must be measured against that early pinnacle – at least until they can top it. Dirge, unfortunately, isn't that album. It is an extremely good album, but Abuse was a great album.
Dirge is a bristling, slavering old school 18 minutes of unsubtle aggression and abrasive annihilation, but it just doesn’t quite straddle the divide between adrenaline junkie and catchy riff earjaculation (thanks, Bill, told you I was stealing that term) as effortlessly as Abuse. Dirge sacrifices memorability on the altar of unrelenting speed and migraine-inducing noise. In fact, it feels overly self conscious and more than a tad safe, as though the sudden explosion of attention had gotten to them. There are fewer songs here that will mug you in a dark alley the way “Fuck…I’m Drunk,” “Murder” or “Born Stupid” roughed you up. That’s compounded by a compression to the mix - possibly an artifact of the band's ridiculously short/punk as fuck recording session - that smashes the guitars into the cymbals, making it hard to latch on to the riffs (especially in a squashed mp3 format; physical formats fare better). But all the other familiar Wormrot elements are prominently pimped out for your enjoyment: the sarcastic humor ("You Suffer But Why is it My Problem" now joins the pantheon of "Seth Putnam is Wrong About a Lot of Things But Seth Putnum is Right About You" as one of my favorite song titles ever) and symbiotic interplay between Rasyid and Fitri (guitar and drums) is on a telepathic level at this point, which frees up frontman Arif to yap and slaver like a poorly socialized pitbull guarding his yard.
Dirge rocks really hard, and I don’t want this to sound overly negative – I’ve spent three months trying to sort out my feelings about this album, assessing whether my unreasonable expectations were at fault. Dirge will certainly blow your hair back and holds its own against the rest of the field in a really crowded year. There’s just that unquantifiable quintessence that’s missing.
If you need any more convincing, Earache is giving the album away as a free download.

[Full disclosure: I bought my copy as soon as it came out, but after I wrote this post and had it queued up Earache sent me both the LP and CD/DVD versions.]

Grindcore Alphabet: Q, R

Q?
Where are you, Q? No, I don’t mean beloved bygone character actor Desmond Lleweyn who gadgeted up James Bond before so many of his missions. I mean where is the grindcore Q? Folks, this is the first letter where I’ve completely struck out. Not a one as far as I can find. I’m probably wrong, and I’ll be delighted if you correct me because right now there’s no joy in Mudville; the mighty Casey Andrew has struck out.
But R, now there’s a proper, respectable grindcore letter. Luckily it more than carries its weight this week, making up for that bum Q’s laziness.Here’s your letters Q and R mixtape [Mediafire]:

Resistant Culture – “Beneath the Concrete” (United States)
Rune – “Four Season Landmark” (United States)
Rato Raro – “Naturalmuerte” (Brazil)
Rot – “Back to the Punk Days” (Brazil)
Rise Above – “Else” (Japan)
Repulsion – “Crematorium” (United States)
Rehumanize – “Planet Laodicea” (United States)
Rotten Sound – “Edge” (Finland)
Realized – “Dominated” (Japan)
Righteous Pigs – “I Hope You Die in a Hotel Fire” (United States)
Retaliation – “Retribution” (Sweden)
Red – “Divided Grief Burns You” (Japan)
Rudimentary Peni – “Alice Crucifies the Paedophiles” (England)
Robocop – “Feminism Uber Alles” (United States)
Relevant Few – “Fake Healer” (Sweden)
Reversal of Man – “Butterflies” (United States)

Total to date: 306 bands

G&P Review: No Gang Colors

No Gang Colors
Honorary Cop
Grindcore Karaoke
Suburban punk and grindcore kids have been appropriating cop-hating hip hop tropes since at least Plutocracy roamed the plains, but it seems like it’s really flourished in recent years with bands like Magrudergrind and Marion Berry swiping urban culture trappings to spruce up their otherwise traditional grind and power violence beatings, making it a permanent part of their aesthetic. The latest three-songs-and-an-intro outing from No Gang Colors revels in mashing up a new wave of power violence/electronics savagery that sears and seethes, using hip hop samples and other urban accoutrements to underscore the EP’s overall anti-cop raison d'etre.
Overall, Honorary Cop is more atmospheric than This is Your God. Instead of beating you about the head and shoulders with digitized Man is the Bastard-style prostrations, No Gang Colors this time out prefer to burrow under the skin with crackling electronic ambiance, seeking out the arterial highway to the cortex to attack your thoughts at the source.
Honorary Cop is nearly synesthetic in approach, approximating sound as a physical force – a buzzing, swarming sound that snaps with washes of overdriven white noise, crackling the edges of the instruments and the vocals, melting all the components into a single, blurred sledge of blunt-edged noise.
I'd have liked for Honorary Cop to be a tad long - a mere five minutes is a bit of a dick tease - but it's another great hint at what this young band is capable of bringing to bear should they break out into long player territory.

[Full disclosure: the band sent me a review copy.]