Blast(beat) from the Past: Bufo

Bufo
Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho
Addiction to War
2008
Form follows function, modern architects will tell you. That means a building's shape should be linked to its purpose. Finnish crustcore hooligans Bufo invert that axiom with their 2008 album Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho (Modernity and the End of the World) because its unique double-7-inch format dictates much of your listening experience. Dividing nine songs over four sides means you'll be flipping wax about every five minutes. That leaves you very little time to do anything else other than concentrate on their Rotten Sound meets Anti Cimex shenanigans and stare at the beautiful, Jesu-style cover art. This is one of those instances where I think any other format would take away from the presentation.
And these princes among grind and crust toads deserve your undivided attention because the trilling punk riff of album opener "Suden Hetki" is a clarion call to arms. By the time the band does that brief pause gag right before erupting into a blastbeat rager you're already thrashing around the room. It's that touch of crust to Bufo's brew that gives the songs time to breathe and flow and circle back about themselves (that awesome riff from "Suden Hekti" makes more than one appearance). It really gives the impression these guys have put some serious thought into their tuneage, and Moderni Ja Maailman Tuho is packed with those little touch moments like the bass isolation on "Silpouteneita Raajoja," the filigree flair of "!Reclama!," or the fact that the mics catch the sound of the drummer setting down his drum sticks at the end of close out anthem "Tama Vie Helvettiin." That close out song, a case of longest song of the album goes last (mitigated somewhat by getting its own side of a record) is a great exclamation point on the package as it lassos an implacably moving mid-paced riff, suddenly explodes into fretboard gymnastics and then chases the exuberance with a chill out coda that eases your way out of the album.
Not everything goes so smoothly (the two songs on side C are completely forgettable), but Bufo do enough right to warrant a listen. The cocksure swagger and cock rock solos are a helpful reminder that Anti Cimex's gutter glam posing wasn't too far removed from the same Sunset Strip style they so disdained.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Round 3

Round two creaks to a close, but this batch of matchups hardly seemed to phase you. This was one of the more lopsided lots of the whole shebang. Hopefully the choices get harder as we whittle away the chaff.

The Old Guard
The closest of the lot, but Gurn's extreme riffing demanded an extreme showdown as he snuck past Steer by 7-6.

The Innovators
You guys sent the Grindfather to the leaky, moldy retirement home with nary a look a back as you advanced Hull by a commanding 12-1 edge.

The Punks
You didn't look back in anger. You looked back in love, paying tribute to grindcore's past while telling grindcore's present to patiently bide its time. Heritage advances past Rasyid by 8-4.

The Technicians
No contest Burke ran the table with a perfect 11-0.


Shit is about to get serious now. Check out these brackets. These are the kinds of debates that ruin friendships and end marriages. This next round will determine who is king of each category. The clock stops on Sunday.

The Old Guard
3. Gurn (Brutal Truth) v. 4. Pintado (Terrorizer/Napalm Death/Resistant Culture)
Gurn and Pintado both picked up the thread from the first two Napalm Death records and pushed the grindcore formula forward to keep it from going stale at birth. Who gets to be king of them all?

The Innovators
2. Hull (ANb/Pig Destroyer/A.C.) v. 6. Papirmollen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU)
Two guys who relentlessly push themselves beyond grindcore convention with every project they undertake. Who does it better?

The Punks
2. Heritage (Assuck) v. 6. Beau (Insect Warfare)
This is a fascinating matchup. You'd arguably probably not have an Insect Warfare without an Assuck. But who best embodies that punk spirit that animates grind?

The Technicians
1. Matsubara (Mortalized/GridLink/Hayaino Daisuki) v. 3. Burke (Lethargy/Sulaco/Brutal Truth)
Two consummate musicians who never let technique get in the way of writing a good song. Which fretboard magician will rise above them all?

Weekend Punk Pick: Television

It's a good bet I'd probably never been able to get Neurosis, Isis or other long, drawn out bands if I hadn't found Television and "Marquee Moon" first. Before stumbling on them my freshman year in college, I thought anything more than 2:30 was an outrageously long epic. But then I found these art punks and the 10 minutes of sheer beauty that was the title track of their 1977 debut album. Marquee Moon is a mash of tricky word play ("I fell into the arms of Venus DeMilo") delivered in Tom Verlaine's wry, distant drone crossed with slantwise music that promiscuously swirled punk with art rock in a way that didn't sound retarded like Talking Heads.

Grind Part, Slayer Part, Garbage to the End: "Angel Present"

"Angel Present" was the working title for what eventually became Compiling Autumn. I started there because it calls back to Evangelion, which was one of the primary influences on The Inalienable Dreamless. But once Jon worked up the be-leafed cover art we agreed Compiling Autumn would probably work better. Not that has anything to do with the song "Angel Present," but, ya know, I felt compelled to say something to introduce this incredibly lengthy tab, which features the infamous "Mexican Hat Dance" segment, which was axed from the final song.

Two Man Advantage: thedowngoing Am Become Destroyers of Grind

I'm always fascinated by two-person bands. The binary unit is pretty much the smallest group you can gather together and still function as a living, performing entity. That's not to knock the isolationists like Body Hammer or Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU who go it alone just fine, thank you very much. However, it seems as though a two-person band combines the best elements of all worlds: a minimal number of people sleeping in the van and clamoring for a cut of the night's take with just enough human interaction to keep one person from crawling too far up his or her own asshole.
Australia's thedowngoing have taken that dynamic duo approach and have mercifully avoided any rectal detours over a pair of increasingly impressive EPs. Guitarist/vocalist Mathias Huxlex and drummer Muzz hit on what I hope will be a template for many successful albums in the future with last year's Untitled EP, 10 minutes of audio exorcism that barely tamed raw noise and rawer emotions and was subsequently snagged by Grindcore Karaoke. That should be all the endorsement you need right there.
Served on an amuse-bouche platter, Huxley said thedowngoing sought to make every excruciating, exhilarating, grinding second of the micron-concise Untitled EP count.
"We definitely embraced the chaotic aspect of our sound on the Untitled EP; it felt really jarring, and intentionally so," Huxley said. "But at the same time a cohesive whole starts to unfold, which develops through the interplay between the samples and the instruments."
While being a two-man unit may have its perquisites, that could also leave thedowngoing at a sonic disadvantage when stacked up against to their more populated contemporaries. With the Untitled EP, thedowngoing made sure you'd never notice the lack.
"Perhaps it was a reactionary thing to only being a two-piece, to create a thick a soundscape as possible to compensate? But it allows us to maintain a tension between violent outbursts throughout the EP," Huxley said. "The EP was very calculated, from song length and choice through to the final mastering process, with every individual aspect working together to create the dark aesthetic of thedowngoing, which is then all rounded out by the lyrics, which focus (as you would imagine) on the negative, ugly aspects of human and social interaction and what it means to be a part of it."
The band's growth from predecessor i am become to the Untitled EP was expansion by contraction. thedowngoing were more focused, wringing every bit of emotion out of their songs and leaving every extraneous second on the cutting room floor to ensure the mini-album would hit with maximum impact. Huxley, himself, led the way with probably the single best vocal performance of 2011; he was a man possessed (I'm still betting literally) and he left his blood, bile and :Linda Blair-worthy pea soup dripping from the microphone.
"We had a different mentality going into the recording process for the Untitled EP compared to i am become it was certainly more focused, especially during the song writing phase which felt much more deliberate, cutting a lot of the fat and emphasising the unique aspects of thedowngoing," Huxley said. "We felt more comfortable pushing our own limits this time round, which shows maybe most notably in the vocal department."
thedowngoing plan to jump back in the studio again early this year with hopes for some international dates to follow. Given the band's evolutionary curve, that immediately puts the upcoming album on my most anticipated list.

G&P Review: Detroit

Detroit
Pusher
Grindcore Karaoke
I fucking hate Detroit. Seriously, I hate Detroit with a cultivated loathing that I acknowledge is most definitely irrational and probably unwarranted. It doesn't matter because I hate everything to do with Detroit.
Oh, I don't mean this Canadian power violence band; they're cool. No, I mean I hate Detroit the city. And when I say I hate Detroit the city, what I really mean is I HATE the fucking Red Wings. Words are not adequate to convey my antipathy. Whole new lexicons of profanity would need to be birthed to express the depths of that nuclear furnace hatred. The eternal debate among St. Louis Blues fans is who we hate more: Detroit or Chicago. Old timers will spin epic yarns of bench-clearing brawls with the Blackhawks from the '70s and '80s, but for those of us a little younger, it's hard to ignore the last 20 years of failure and defeat at the hands of the fucking Red Wings. And the fact that Detroit doesn't even view it as a rivalry only stings more.
But none of that has anything to do with Detroit the band. It's not their fault their chosen appellation is such an emotional trigger for me. However, I'm betting their any-era hardcore shit fits will probably serve as an adequate emotional purgative for everyone else. The five song slugfest that is Pusher slams you with the force of a T.J. Oshie bodycheck. The guitars have a glorious, serrated heft to them as the feral yowling encapsulates the essence of post-adolescent anomie and frustration. Detroit have paradoxically grown by slimming down since their last demo. The 45 second songs just feel tighter and more pinpoint. Rather than trying to jam two or three movements or emotional points into a song, Detroit focus on nailing one perfect moment and then letting it go free when it's run its course on songs like the throttling "White Walls//Good Child" and hammering opener "Smith."
In fact, as I sit here writing this, Detroit perfect encapsulate my rage the morning after St. Louis lost a bad game to the Red Wings. Again.
Oh look, another loss to Chicago too. Now I don't have to chose. FML.

[Detroit (the good Detroit) sent me a download.]

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Round 2 Week 2

Round two kicked off with the rise of the underdogs...to a certain extent. Here's who you say will be moving on.

The Old Guard
Repulsion have been riding one damn good album for decades now, and apparently that isn't enough to compete with Jesse Pintado's plethora of outfits over the years. The J-man squeaked out the grave robbers by 9-5.

The Innovators
Human Remains were grindcore prophets of the new flesh, but we live in a transhuman era and Papirmollen is the acolyte of extraterrestrial grind. The Norwegian prodigy advances by a vote of 8-6.

The Punks
Phobia are a grindcore institution who seem to be on the upswing after a pretty fallow middle frame, but they still got scorched by Insect Warfare's Beau by 12-2.

The Technicians
And here's where the underdogs' momentum came slamming to a halt. Rob Marton's untimely demise at the hands of Rainwater is avenged as the Noisear noodler got served by the tentacle rape tuneage of Mastsubara by a commanding 9-5.

The brackets have been updated and the visually minded them can peruse them here. Meanwhile, it's time to get down to the second half of Round Two. Arguments close on Sunday.

The Old Guard
2. Steer (Carcass/Napalm Death) v. 3. Gurn (Brutal Truth)
Can Steer drive Gurn from enslavement to obliteration or is he about to face a brutal truth?

The Innovators
2. Hull (ANb/Pig Destroyer/Anal Cunt) v. 4. Johnson (Enemy Soil/Drugs of Faith)
Two drum machine innovators who have plenty of other tricks in their tool boxes. Only one gets to move forward.

The Punks
2. Heritage (Assuck) v. 5. Rasyid (Wormrot)
I don't envy you here. Assuck represent the best of grind's past, but Wormrot are the future. Who's more important?

The Technicians
3. Burke (Lethargy/Sulaco/Brutal Truth) v. 5. Arp. (Psyopus)
Arp may be the most technically adroit of all these fretboard wizards, but does his work stand up against one of the great grind innovators in Burke?

Weekend Punk Pick: TSOL

Probably best known as "that band on the drummer's shirt in that one Guns 'n' Roses video," TSOL were punk chameleons who debuted a new identity and a new vocalist virtually every album. True Sounds of Liberty (with particularly emphasis on the plural) started out as pretty typical SoCal punk (think Offspring pre-cursors), drifted into ill-conceived, Damned-inflected goth rock and finally settled on a sleazy Sunset Strip gutter punk on masterwork Change Today? that served as the hairsprayed flipside of the spandex rock that ruled the '80s.

Grind Part, Slayer Part, Garbage to the End: "Appleseed"

Based purely on the animated adaptations, I vastly prefer Masamune Shirow's Ghost in the Shell to his Appleseed. I just think Ghost in the Shell has more depth and more interesting characters and ideas. However, Jon tells me if you go to the original manga, it's Appleseed that's actually a better story. Good enough to inspire this early career favorite.

G&P Review: Melted Cassettes

Melted Cassettes
The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings
Mind Flare
Musicians, in general, have been pledging allegiance to and their preference for Hell since Robert Johnson put his soul up on the auction block with Ol' Scratch. Metalheads have made their satanic proclivities central from the first time Ozzy wheezed into a mic, but very few artists have ever approximated the agony that defines their preferred spiritual destination as well as Melted Cassettes, whose evocative name hints at the sulfurous electronic immolation that awaits with The Real Sounds From Hell Recordings. These guys must have season passes to Hell's greatest attractions because that's the only way to explain the demoniac accuracy of their tortured audio assault.
Playing spot the influences will likely turn up traces of the spoken word passages from Altered States of America, Steve Austin's slit wrist confessional vocals and the kind of nightmare fuel David Cronenberg thought was too crazy to film. However they arrived at it, Melted Cassettes torture and abuse electronics for your amusement like a binary Grand Guignol spectacle for the Internet age. "Shining Figures" is a tour of a desolate silicon wasteland made poisonous by toxic electronic components. "Pushing Buttons" is the kind of dance music played on whatever alien vessel abducted and probed the shit out of Gigantic Brain. And after listening to "Razed From the Bottle" I want to know why Winters in Osaka and Body Hammer never told me about the time Clive Barker asked them to soundtrack his Saturday morning children's show.
Too often electronic-based music is cold and impersonal, lacking that vital human element. But Melted Cassettes works on an disturbingly intimate emotional level. It has an unhealthy drive, burrowing into your soul like a psychological chestburster planting seeds in your soul. Hell awaits.

[Full disclosure: Mind Flare sent me a review copy.]

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Round 2 Week 1

It may have taken extra innings, but we're ready to get back into it. I asked you who made the most persuasive arguments and here's who won the masses over:

Yes I know this wasn't actually Perpetual Strife's vote (actually, he voted the opposite way, but it was enough to get Shane Bywaters thinking:
"I'd totally die before I call Psyopus a grindcore band, but I'm totally enjoying this tom-foolery of fretboard silliness. Reminds me of one of my most hidden dirty secrets: I like Beneath the Massacre's first EP. Something about sterile sounding guitars flipping the fuckout. "

So Arp moves on.

Meanwhile, Will Hubbell got down with Desiccated Veins' reasoning:
"Huh, kind of a tough one. Dick Johnson definitely did his part to shepherd grind safely out of the '90s, and for better or worse, Borja taught us what meaty-as-fuck Discordance Axis riffs sound like. Maybe it's 'cause I'm guilty about sending one Rob Marton worshipper through already, or maybe it's because Fractured Theology is sounding really good right now, but I'm gonna vote Johnson."

So that means Johnson will live to fight another day.

So here's the opening frame of round two. Check out the reseeded brackets here. Here's this week's matchups. As always, you've got until Sunday to make your case.

The Old Guard
1. Olivo/Freeman (Repulsion) v. 4. Pintado (Terrorizer/Napalm Death/Resistant Culture)
Grind from the grave vs. the guy who went to his too soon.

The Innovators
1. Procopio/Baglino (Human Remains) v. 6. Papirmollen (Parlamentarisk Sodomi/PSUDOKU)
I think this might be the most fascinating of the bunch: the guys who pretty much invented grind weirdness vs. the guy who perfected it for the 21st century.

The Punks
1. Burda/McLachlan (Phobia) v. 6. Beau (Insect Warfare)
Classic California punky grind vs. classic sounding Texas punky grind.

The Technicians
1. Matsubara (Mortalized/GridLink/Hayaino Daisuki) v. 7. Rainwater (Noisear/Kill the Client)
You all broke my heart when Rainwater somehow beat Rob Marton (I forgive you). Can the up and coming underdog take it two impossible triumphs in a row by taking out Matsubara as well?

Weekend Punk Pick: Social Distortion

Picking up the trailer park vibe from X last week, it's helpful to remember that Social Distortion didn't always suck. Their retro '50s white trash punk shtick, at least early on, was more rooted more in Some Like it Hot glamor and camp than it was in brooding The Wild One angst. First album, Mommy's Little Monster, was actually a rockin' punk valentine to Jerry Lee Lewis and that whole first wave of Southern white rock. If Social Distortion had one overarching flaw, it's that they were born in the wrong era. Songs like "Moral Threat" pined for the stultifying conformity of the Eisenhower era because it would have presented a much brighter line to rebel against. Reagan was just a poor man's substitute.

Grind Part, Slayer Part, Garbage to the End: "Use of Weapons"

Hilarious story (sorta; to me, anyway): My boss recently gave me an Iain M. Banks book. He's an author I'd blown off for years because it turns out I had him confused with talentless hack Neal Asher, who wrote Gridlinked, source of another Chang band's nom de grind. Whoops. Turns out Banks is pretty good for a space opera kinda guy (I'm more of a bio/cyberpunk kinda dude [I can't recommend Paolo Bacigalupi's magnificent The Windup Girl enough, if that's also your thing.]). I haven't read Banks' Use of Weapons, but it's one of the influences that made The Inalienable Dreamless what it is. Here's how it goes:

Panic! at the Discography: Looking for an Answer

"Matthew, Mark. Luke and John are a bunch of practical jokers who meet somewhere and decide to have a contest. They invent a character, agreed on a few basic facts, and then each one's free to take it and run with it. And the end, they'll see who's done the best job. The four stories are picked up by some friends who act as critics: Matthew is fairly realistic, but insists on that Messiah business too much; Mark isn't bad, just a little sloppy; Luke is elegant, no denying that; and John takes the philosophy a little too far. Actually, though, the books have an appeal, they circulate, and when the four realize what's happening, it's too late. Paul has already met Jesus on the road to Damascus, Pliny begins his investigation ordered by the worried emperor, and a legion of apocryphal writers pretends also to know plenty. ... Toi, apocryphe lecteur, mon semblance, mon frere. It all goes to Peter's head; he takes himself seriously. John threatens to tell the truth, Peter and Paul have him chained up on the island of Patmos. Soon the poor man is seeing things: Help, there are locusts all over my bed, make those trumpets stop, where's all this blood coming from? The others say he's drunk, or maybe it's arteriosclerosis. ... Who knows, maybe it really happened that way."

Umberto Eco
Foucault's Pendulum
1988

Looking for an Answer
Split the Suffering Split the Pain
Deep Six
2010
Looking for an Answer may have had the most immaculate conception since Athena bored her way out of Zeus' noggin fully formed. Even when they were just a couple of guys tooling around with a drum machine, the raging Spaniards showed a poise and songcraft that set them apart from their peers as evinced by this early efforts compendium. Once they roped in live drummer Moya (who collaborated with vocalist Inaki in the semi-legendary Denak), Looking for an Answer became truly incendiary. The evolutionary growth from their earliest material, categorized chronologically, through their pre-Extincion offerings is almost operatic in its sweep and only becomes that much more impressive viewed through the hindsight lens of the awesome Eterno Treblinka.
In fact, just about any song at random from Split the Suffering Split the Pain could have been lifted and dropped on to the later albums without arousing too much comment. "Voluntaria Ignorancia's" thrash riffs meet blast beats could be the long lost twin of Extincion's "Ruptura." The (finger picked?) bass garbling of "Invasion" and "Verdadero Enemigo" bring to mind the more lofi, Repulsion Jr. scummery of La Caceria. Driving Looking for an Answer's best work is that slab-sided, grim visaged death inflection that adds a menace that punk alone just can't provide.
This is one of those rare discography records, like 38 Counts of Battery, that works perfectly well on its own as a self-contained album experience. Learning more about Looking for an Answer's past can only make you more excited for their future. Give them 60 seconds and they'll give you an awesome song.

Grindcore Bracketology 2: Week 4 Clusterfuck Bonus Round

The first round should be over now. But nooooooooooooo Chaosphere got his/her/its/their votes in under the wire and had to fuck it up. For the first time in Grindcore Bracketology history we have not one but two ties. This is why we can't have nice things.
Here's how it went down.

The Old Guard
Pintado sieged Habelt's power in this round, causing the Siege guitarist's world downfall (I apologize for that whole sentence) by 13-3.

The Innovators
You guys deadlocked between Johnson's consistent history of grind innovation and Borja's promise of continued evolution by 7-7.

The Punks
Rotten Sound placed two overall last time we did this. Guitarist Aalto won't even make it out of the first round, squashed by Rasyid by a perfect 16-0.

The Technicians
In the least popular matchup of the lot, Antigama's Rokicki and Psyopus' Arp got all stranglefucked together at 5-5.

So that means we can't move on to the next round because I can't reseed the matchups. Ergo, we enter the lightning round. Once again our contestants are:

The Innovators: Johnson (Enemy Soil/Drugs of Faith) v. Borja (Maruta)

The Technicians: Rokicki (Antigama) v. Arp (Psyopus)

This week's challenge is to go back over the comments from the last round and tell me who most convincingly argued their case in these two matchups. I'll pick the two best arguments and those people's picks will move on. May the best argument win. Once again you've got until Sunday. Don't fuck this up too.

Weekend Punk Pick: X

A full decade before Social Distortion hit upon the same idea, Los Angeles greaser punks X were already bringing the high speed white trash. While X boasted the wonted punk sense of very, very mordant humor, they bent their sarcasm in service of addressing some pretty serious topics such as rape on "Johnny Hit and Run Pauline." Or sometimes they were just off on a lark, like my personal favorite, "Your Phone's Off the Hook (But You're Not)."

Grind Part, Slayer Part, Garbage to the End: "Castration Rite"

When Jon Chang got the crazy idea to expand Compiling Autumn from a series of blog posts (my plan) to a short book (his plan), we talked about adding a few extras to ensure you all got your money's worth. Unfortunately, a lot of our plans just didn't pan out. Among our brainfarts was including a complete tablature for The Inalienable Dreamless. However, the printer just wasn't equipped to handle that.
Anyone who has read Chang's liner notes to the reissued versions of Jouhou and Original Sound Version knows that guitarist Rob Marton had a ... unique ... approach to tabbing out his songs. The various riffs were referred to as "grind parts" or "Slayer parts" rather than getting mapped out in conventional musical notations. Pity stand in Steve Procopio who periodically filled the guitar slot and had to make some sense of Marton's direction.
So in what is very likely a first, Discordance Axis have pulled together band-approved tabs of several songs from all phases of their career (complete with helpful/sarcastic side notes), which I'll be posting each Friday. And there's no better place to start than TID's infamous opener "Castration Rite."

Kaiju Big Mettal

Like a lot of guys my age whose childhoods revolved around dreary nowhere Midwestern towns, my formative Saturday afternoons often consisted of marathon sessions of Japanese dudes in rubber monster suits whaling on each other. Kaiju eiga were a staple of my childhood, and I've been binging on them lately after a good decade away. Watching the original,uncut Gojira (sans a drunken, condescending Raymond Burr) and Rodan (which is essentially a doom lovers' story), I was struck by just how grim, how metal those movies really were in context. The subtext was probably lost on me at 10, but, like me, plenty of heavy musicians have drawn inspiration from what, on the surface, were pretty ridiculous seeming popcorn flicks.
If you'll allow me to step away from grind and hardcore for a moment, I want to pay tribute to four monstrous sounding bands who also have a fondness for the King of All Monsters. It's like Kaiju Big Mettal.

Starting with the very first generation raised on rubber monsters, proto-metallers goofs Blue Oyster Cult went straight for the best of the beasts with "Godzilla."

Godzilla

When they weren't being all dour and gloomy and bummed out by Birmingham, industrial titans Godflesh sang the praises of peaceful lady creature "Mothra." Look for her to be stamped on tramps everywhere.

Mothra

Whales in space would make for a great kaiju flick on its own, but French metallions Gojira prove their titanic monster bonafides by going straight to the source, swiping their name from a more correct anglicazation of our beloved Godzilla.

Gojira

I'm just gonna straight to Wikipedia for this one because I can't make it sound more metal: "Gigan is a cybernetic monster sporting a buzzsaw weapon in its frontal abdominal region and large metallic hooks for hands. Gigan is considered Godzilla's most brutal and violent opponent, alongside Destroyah, both of which were easily able to severely injure Godzilla. Gigan was also the first monster in the Toho sci-fi series to cause Godzilla to visibly bleed."

Gigan

Now I'm totally in the mood to start a Halo- and Burmese-style bass and drums sludge band named Battra.