Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 7: From the End of the World

You were never noticed in life
It was the wrong time
It was the wrong place
Now that you're gone, you live in my dreams

"Black.Sun.Rise"
Salo

Photo courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Anodyne were probably the best band you never heard of around the turn of the century. Though they grew up alongside some of the most popular bands of the Boston boom of the late '90s and shared labels with a who's who of noise rock contemporaries, Anodyne were a band that just never seemed to find its niche with the music-buying masses.
    "We've never really had an audience the way other bands had an audience so kids who like Blood for Blood will like us," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "We've always been sort of like a square peg in a round hole in whatever scenario we were in. The Level Plane kids were open minded. They weren't really exposed to extreme music like we were doing. We were never a major band. We were never able to draw more than 50 people anyway."
    If Anodyne were never able to connect with a wider audience, it certainly wasn't from a lack of trying. The road dogs would play just about anywhere with just about any band.
    "We would play with all sorts of bands on tour, black metal, crust, grindcore, that weird electronic spastic shit that was popular then, tough guy shit, all kinds of bands," bassist Joshua Scott said. "We were less concerned about the bands we played with than we were with just being gone and playing shows. There would usually be one or two kids who were into it."
    Critical darlings like Isis championed Anodyne, taking them on the road several times, but it never translated into the same level of material success.   
    "That connection with them helped us a little bit. Aaron and those guys would always try to help us when they could," Hill said.

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 6: Into the Outer Dark

Too far I want
Too much I fell
From grace disappear
I wish I knew why it
Felt like ice picks

"Lucky Sky Diamond"
The Outer Dark

    After eight years and three full lengths, the members of Anodyne went their separate ways after they failed to find an audience for their idiosyncratic take on hardcore and noise rock. Nearly every record label the band worked with has since gone out of business, leaving the bulk of the band's material out of print and minimizing their shot at posthumous underground glory.
    "Anodyne was an obscure band," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. There was only really a few people who remember the band. We weren't like Coalesce who were selling out huge places and selling huge records. Re-releasing things by them makes sense. Us, you'd get my mom and two friends, maybe. I wouldn't even sell a copy to my mom. I'd give it to her."
    But Anodyne's legacy lives as its DNA filtered down through the various musicians' new projects. Anodyne alumni have taken stabs at grindcore, shoegaze, sludge, indie rock and electronic music in the years since they crawled out from under a Lifetime of Gray Skies.

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 5: Infernal Machine

I read your diary
In the top drawer
Next to your bed
You lie awake at night
I know what's on your mind

"Carnot Engine"
Lifetime of Gray Skies

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    For their third and final full length, 2004's Lifetime of Gray Skies, Anodyne, like peers Lickgoldensky, made the leap from Escape Artist to Level Plane Records looking for a change of musical scenery. Level Plane owner Greg Drudy was looking to expand his label's niche beyond screamo to include other offshoots of the punk family tree.
    "Around that time Greg was working with bands like Coliseum as well. Coliseum is further away from being a screamo band than we were," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "I feel like at the time Greg was trying to expand away from emo and that kind of trip. His musical interests were expanding."
    Though Anodyne had leaped to a new label, the songwriting process remained consistent. Riffs and songs were intensely workshopped and improved through intensive and laborious rehearsals.
    "We approached writing the same as the previous two records, just trying to create something we were into, always attempting to build something more expansive," drummer Joel Stallings said. "By this point we had been touring like crazy, so I think that lifestyle fed into the writing, and our strengths as players."
    Lifetime of Gray Skies was recorded at Telefunken Studios in Connecticut in 2004 as Anodyne were gearing up for their first European tour.
    "It was a fairly intense time," bassist Joshua Scott said. "My job was winding down. We were trying to find the best place to record, playing shows, screening record covers, and getting ready for Europe. I think we left for the European tour a week or less after we finished recording and mixing the record. I also was called for jury duty somewhere in there. As usual, the studio situation was fucked up. We had chosen a studio in Connecticut on the advice of our friend and because of their tape machine. The studio manager didn’t even have it set up when we got there. We wasted a day straightening that shit out, and then were told we had a 10 pm curfew on noise, not what we had been told when we were scheduling shit. Joel and I finished our takes the next day and took the bus back to [New York] to finish out our jobs. When we returned later in the week, Mike and the other engineer had pretty much mixed it, and we just listened to the finals, which is fine with me. It’s a process I have little tolerance for."

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 4: Finest Craftsman

I'll create you
Erase the parts I don't like
I'll destroy you
Like everyone you've ever known

"Like Water in Water"
The Outer Dark

Photo courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    With powerhouse drummer Joel Stallings in the fold, Anodyne entered their most intense and productive phase of the band. The trio's stability allowed them to reel off a series of defining EPs and a pair of well received albums, including the band's farewell masterwork, Lifetime of Gray Skies in the span of three years.
    "That was pretty much the beginning of that era of the band, probably the most well known version of the band, the lineup that was more singular in its approach," guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. "We were all on board with touring and rehearsing. We had a pretty rigorous rehearsal schedule. That was the most productive era of the band. It felt like an unlimited creative pool. Everyone's playing was at a really high point at that point. We were constantly writing."
    Anodyne would schedule marathon rehearsal sessions, spending three or four hours at a time working over their music. Anodyne was Hill's whole world at the time, and he poured out everything he had and felt into his music and lyrics.
    "I didn't have anything else to do," he said. "I was living this sort of lean existence. The band was everything I had. That's the way I wanted to approach it at that period. As a result, we were able to write a lot, come up with a lot of material, hone our skills as musicians. There's a lot of chemistry between us as musicians. We get there from rehearsing."
 

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 3: Start With Subtraction

Erase these moments
Erase these wasted years
Sometimes I wish I could disappear
Sometimes I can't

"Our Lady of Assassins"
The Outer Dark

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Short a drummer and second guitarist, Anodyne went through a "weird hiatus period for a couple of months" in 2001 that saw the band ultimately relocate to New York, guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill said. Once there, Hill and bassist Joshua Scott would recruit a phenomenal new drummer in Joel Stallings and usher in the band's most stable, focused and creative era.
    "Moving didn’t seem like a big deal to me; I was prepared," Scott said. "I was surprised when [previous drummer Ira] Bronson quit (which happened as we were loading out from the Enemymine show we had just played), but I knew we would find someone. Any confidence came from the fact that we had been playing in bands for a while, and I knew I could play in a band wherever we were. It was the normal state.  My concern was finding a job and a place to live. Luckily, Mike put me up until I did find a place."
    Once they settled into New York, Anodyne started the search for a second guitarist to take Ayal Naor's place. One of the prospects was Black Army Jacket's Andrew Orlando. The two bands had met and bonded at shows and Black Army Jacket drummer Dave Witte chipped in as a session drummer for Anodyne, so it seemed like a natural fit. Anodyne pressed Orlando into service when they played Hellfest in 2001.
    "I was very familiar with their music, loved the hell out of Quiet Wars, and the new material they had was so amazing. I was a big fan of it all," Orlando said. "We practiced a couple of times, and all I can say is that when it came for the day of the show, I felt completely overwhelmed. Listening to what Mike plays and then trying to actually play it are two completely different things. Mike is an amazing player on a very different level than me and it kind of showed. I was hanging on for dear life. But, it sounded noisy and chaotic and kind of cool."

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 2: The Great Assimilator

Only you can give
Give me what I need
It was always you

"Portable Crematorium"
Lifetime of Gray Skies

Photos courtesy of Scott Kinkade

    Anodyne stood at the fringe of Boston's hardcore boom at the turn of the century, coming up alongside acts like Isis, Converge and Cave In. Though all of those bands had overlapping musical interests and shared a common love of hardcore and noise rock, each was able to spin that into distinct and unique sounds.
    "There were a lot of good bands coming out of Boston at that time," Isis drummer Aaron Harris said. "I remember thinking the same thing. Why are all these bands from Boston? We were all friends and toured together. We all rehearsed in the same crappy rehearsal complex in Allston. Isis shared a practice space with Cave In for a while, and Anodyne rehearsed down the hall."
    "Boston was definitely having a good moment," Anodyne guitarist and vocalist Ayal Naor said. "I was around a little earlier than that. There was a feeling that something was happening, and it was an exciting time to make music. ... There's a kind of feeling that something is happening and you're playing with these bands and you get excited to play with them. We'd tour with Isis and see them 30 nights in a row, and I would stand there and see them every night."
    However, guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill always felt out of place compared to close-knit relationship shared by those other bands.
   

Lifetime of Gray Skies Part 1: Form is Emptiness

 I wear an iron mask to hide the ugly truth
Lifetime of gray skies

"In the Desert Sight Precedes Sound"
Lifetime of Gray Skies


    There were no press releases announcing Anodyne's breakup in 2005. The band did not hit the tour trail for one more victory lap. Burned out and creatively spent, the then-New York trio quietly canceled their plans for a European tour and laid to rest one of the most abrasive and aggressive hardcore bands of the young millennium.
    "I'm super critical of the fanfare people put on these things like 'This is our last show,'" said guitarist and vocalist Mike Hill, the band's sole constant through its eight year existence.
    It's probably a given that Converge will go down as this generation's equivalent of Black Flag, but Anodyne make a perfect Miss Congeniality to the other Boston hardcore institution's Prom Queen. Anodyne reeled off three vicious records, including apotheosis Lifetime of Gray Skies, and the requisite van-full of EPs in an eight year period, honing and perfecting their sandpaper scrape brand of hardcore. Unlike Converge, though, Anodyne fizzled partly because they were never able to identify a demographic hungry for their angular, driving, emotionally cathartic hardcore. Though Anodyne, itself, was never able to connect with a wider audience, it should be remembered as a proving ground for a series of musicians who would spin off into a host of creatively challenging bands as varied as Tombs, 27 and Defeatist.
    "It's something we all did together and it's something important to us," Hill said. "It made us grow as people and as friends. It helped us achieve the things we're doing now. It was a building block."

I am Ironman: The Life and Grind of Dave Witte

Dave Witte’s fleet feet have powered just about every significant fast band of the last 15 years, but now he wants to put his mettle to the pedal at Hawaii’s Ironman triathlon.
With one triathlon under his belt already, the tattooed triathlete dreams of descending on King Kamehameha’s old stomping grounds for one of the most grueling running/biking/swimming endurance tests on the planet.
And for a chaser? Maybe celebrating from atop Mt. Midoriyama in Japan.
“That would be great. Some of that stuff is really hard,” said Witte, a fan of G4’s Ninja Warrior and Unbeatable Banzuke.
But until he gets his chance to party with Makoto Nagano, he’s content to keep the beat for Municipal Waste and about a bazillion other outings, each equally awesome.
While sitting at home waiting for a new bass drum to arrive – look for it on Muncipal Waste’s upcoming tour with a reunited At the Gates – Witte graciously took time to reminisce over a career that has seen him pound the skins for some of the defining metal bands of the last decade. Turns out the guy has trouble sitting still, which goes a long way to explaining his restless feet.
“At one point I was in six different things, and I said, ‘I must be crazy,’” the part time catering worker said. “I get fidgety. I like to keep busy. I love working. Hard work is something I appreciate.”
The career of one of metal’s most prolific drummers was almost derailed before he blasted out his first beat.
At 10 Witte contracted Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a central nervous system disorder that can cause paralysis. During his lengthy rehabilitation, Witte’s uncle, a blues drummer, handed him a set of drum stick and a 20 year career was born.
“It was the perfect gift at the time,” Witte said.
After two years beating on wooden blocks, the self taught drummer graduated to a “shit kicker” kit where he pounded along with AC/DC albums until he found a new instructor – Dave Lombardo.
“I heard Reign in Blood and that was it,” Witte said. “My mom wanted to kill me. I was in my room playing Reign in Blood over and over. … When I heard that double bass solo [in ‘Angel of Death’] I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
Turns out, the guy’s pretty fricken good at it. From his first foray with Human Remains up through his upcoming powerviolence band with Anodyne/Versoma/Tombs’ Mike Hill, Witte has consistently pushed himself and his skills. Not simply content to play fast, musical polygamist Witte’s playing, from the restraint of his tenure with Anodyne through blastbeatery with Discordance Axis, has always emphasized the whole song rather than individual BPM glory.
“The guy has cultivated a level of musicianship that is near impossible to match,” experimental musician and Phantomsmasher bandmate James Plotkin – no technical slouch himself – said. “Technical precision and creativity are in absolute abundance, but one of his strongest attributes is his incredible attitude and personality. In my opinion there are very few people out there that deserve to be in a band with Dave, or even in the same room with him for that matter.”
Witte’s drumming nurtured with a steady diet of Phil Rudd, Nicko McBrain, Neil Peart, Pete Sandoval and New Jersey death thrashers Ripping Corpse’s Brandon Thomas, who played big brother to Witte’s first serious band, Human Remains. And it was that underappreciated-in-its-time collective of Jersey tape traders, soured on the cookie cutter direction of death, who crafted one of the enduring trademarks of Witte’s career: a determination to be original regardless of the cost.
“That was the first band that played more than one show. That was the first band that traveled out of town, the first band I recorded with,” Witte said. “We knew we didn’t want to sound like everybody else. We were like, ‘Man, all the shit sounds the same.’”
It’s the non-metal influences – Rudd, Peart and others—that challenged the burgeoning talent to stretch his musical repertoire.
“I stepped over the metal line and discovered some other things. The drumming was good but it wasn’t metal. … I never wanted to be sloppy.”
And sloppy he ain’t. But while his tight fills and greyhound speed have made his fame, Witte doesn’t always get the proper credit for just how musical his playing can be.
“Everybody wants to do as many notes as possible, but I got over that pretty quick. I approached it as the whole song,” he said.
While his favorite album in his prodigious back catalogue is the jaw dropping Tokyo on crack grindfest The Inalienable Dreamless, Witte claims his favorite personal performance is actually a one off outing on Andoyne’s Red Was Her Favorite Color EP.
“That was my favorite drumming. It was so barren and stripped down. I learned it the day before and recorded it the next,” he said. “It’s one of my favorites.”
His detour through noise rock bliss also score Witte his first – and to date – only guitar solo credit on the song “Persuasion.”
“I played guitar like I just ran my fingers all over the thing. That was my guitar solo. I don’t have the desire to play guitar. I’m comfortable with drums.”
In fact, the professional musician’s girlfriend is his home’s reigning Guitar Hero champ.
“It was like seeing a fish out of water,” said Escape Artist Records’ Scott Kinkade, how also had a cameo on “Persuasion.” “… It was a very nervous experience that went very quickly. It was a euphoric state that to this day, I wonder if it really happened.”
Witte and Hill have reunited for the power violence band King Generator, whose new 12” is do out this summer.
Though he would be hard pressed to name all of his musical collaborators over the past 20 years, don’t think you can talk Witte into playing on your band’s 7-inch over a lunch break. The reason there’s a distinctive lack of suck on his C.V. is because he’s selective. When you juggle five or six bands at once, you can’t leap into new projects willy nilly, ya know.
And he’s already got a fairly impressive list of musical sidekicks on his wish list, including Louisville’s Patterson brothers, the musical masterminds behind The National Acrobat and a host of others, and New Jersey hip hop explorer Dalek.
“I send him a text message now and then. ‘I’m your drummer this year right?’ He tells me I’m first on the list,” he said.
He’ll have to pencil those in between the Waste, an upcoming Burnt by the Sun Album (finally!), Alec Empire, his math rock band (“to keep my chops up”) and the inevitable solo project.
“I have an electric kit and real kit I want to combine and make songs. … I want to do a lot of improve stuff. I’ll do some fast stuff again, sure. I’m not signing up to win the race for the fastest. I’m over that now. I did that in the ’90s. There’s more to drumming to me.”
But don’t take that to mean the man has sworn off blast beats. He’s sure he’ll get the itch to rattle a snare again before he hangs up his sticks.
“I’m pretty fortunate. That’s what I love. That’s what I was born to do. I can always find something to keep my going,” he said. “My whole life I was always in a few bands at once because I wanted to do everything at once.”

From Blastbeats to Breakdowns and Beyond: A Partial Dave Witte Discography

There’s a very short list of artists whose copious body of work I will follow religiously, picking up new projects sight unseen (sound unheard?). I will fanatically hunt down albums featuring Scott Hull, Jon Chang, Justin Broadrick, Mike Hill or Stephen O’Malley. But the only drummer to hold that honor is Mr. Witte, the Takashi Miike of metal. Unfortunately for fans, the guy’s got a musical rap sheet that would make John Gotti blush. Here’s some selected highlights from Witte’s back catalogue.

Human Remains
Using Sickness as a Hero
Relapse
1996 (Reissued in 2002 on Where Were You When)
Where were any of us when Human Remains were rewriting the death metal/grind template with off kilter songs and truly bizarre movie samples? Coming up on the band’s 20th anniversary, the New Jersey collective’s deliberately original blend of death, grind and out of nowhere guitar scrapes and skronks has yet to be matched.
Swapping tapes with bands around the world, Human Remains quickly became bored with the cookie cutter, Cookie Monster vocalled death that was quickly ossifying into the strictures we know today. So they gave metal a much needed colon cleansing with an enema of carnivalesque guitar work, redonkulous speed and throaty vocal assaults that steered clear of the typical death metal lyrics in favor of horrors more cerebral.
As seems to be a pattern with Witte’s early work, Human Remains never seemed to capture the popular imagination during their brief lifespan, but the band has earned a place as forward looking visionaries in the decades since and Relapse’s rerelease of their discography guarantees them a shot at metal immortality.

Black Army Jacket
222
Reservoir/ Chainsaw Safety
1998
All apologies to Man is the Bastard, but powerviolence was not strictly a West Coast phenomenon. New Jersey’s Black Army Jacket admirably flew the flag of up tempo, gnarled hardcore for those of us living on the right hand side of the country during the ’90s.
Black Army Jacket was the hardcore outlet for a guy who was already sending metal and grind ass over tea kettle with Human Remains and Discordance Axis, respectively. 222’s songs swarm like a pack of feral pitbulls running down a kitten, just a relentless assault of gruff vocalled punk that hit and ran at near-Discordance speeds.
And for those of you curious as to what’s on Mr. Witte’s mind, grok “When I Can’t See You are You There?” featuring a rare lyrical and vocal cameo by the drummer.

Anodyne
Red Was Her Favorite Color
Happy Couples Never Last
1998
Second generation noise rock misanthrope Mike Hill tapped Witte to man the throne for this EP when the band was between the drummers. A Charles Manson cover and three Hill originals gave Witte a chance to back off the BPMs and remind the world he can really drum. As in, the guy knows how to employ restrain and understatement if that’s what a song calls for.
Red Was Her Favorite Color was re-released on the Anodyne compilation The First Four Years, including Witte’s only known guitar credit to date, playing a “solo” on the song “Persuasion.”
Hill tapped Witte again for the first lineup of what would later become Versoma, and though the two never recorded together in that project, they are reuniting this year in the powerviolence band King Generator.

East-West Blast Test
East-West Blast Test

Slap-a-Ham (Reissued by Relapse)
2000
East-West Blast Test is almost more famous for how it was recorded – Witte recording drum tracks in Jersey and then mailing them off to the West Coast where Spazz-oid Chris Dodge recorded guitar lines, perfecting the songs via tape trading – than the actual music itself. But don’t be mistaken; their chattering update on the powerviolence sound contained 45 second bursts of creative insanity wrapped in breathless acceleration. This album shows that not only could powerviolence rupture your tympanum, but it could you challenge you intellectually as well.
When the duo reunited in 2006 on Popular Music for Unpopular People, that’s when things got really weird.

Discordance Axis
The Inalienable Dreamless
Hyra Head
2001
If this doesn’t have a privileged position in your collection, you’re reading the wrong fucking blog. Witte, Jon Chang and Rob Marton dragged grind across the Pacific and gave it a glittering neon Tokyo sheen. Sleek the is the first word that comes to mind when trying to described the bassless trio’s rapid, slashing assault on conventional songwriting. And for their, sadly, final album they pushed grind to its limits, marrying blastbeats to some of the most intense, emotional and deeply honest lyrics in metal, all wrapped up in the metaphors of anime, manga and video games. Though the band never got the attention it deserved during its on again, off again existence, time has been kind to Discordance Axis, who now rank as one of the most revered and seminal bands in grind’s second wave.

Phantomsmasher
Phantomsmasher

Ipecac
2002
Yes, Witte can ratta tat tat the high BPMS like nobody’s fricken business, but lost amid the guy’s blinding speed and hectic fills is the fact that dude knows how to contribute to songs as a whole. Handpicked by Old Lady Drivers’ James Plotkin for this experimental instrumental ensemble, rounded out by DJ Speedranch, Witte only sacrifices a fraction of his speed to complement Plotkin’s left field songwriting and Speedranch’s shuddering electronic freakouts. Songs lurch along with slantwise rhythms and sputtering time signatures on an album that slots nicely next to the truly bizarre second East-West Blast Test album.

Burnt by the Sun
The Perfect is the Enemy of the Good
Relapse
2003
Finally shedding their early Coalesce-isms, a slimmed down four piece Burnt by the Sun perfected metalcore on their second full length. The Jersey quartet, reuniting Witte his song writing partners from Human Remains, not only melded hardcore bark with metal arrangements and progression, but also managed to be political without the mere recitations of “This sucks” that have plagued punk and metal for nigh on thirty years. Instead, frontman Mike Olender casts his keen eye on the intersection of the political and financial sectors to trace the paths of power that covertly influence all of our lives. The band has already written five songs on its much delayed third album after Olender and Witte took a hiatus from the group, so with a little luck, the new platter could be in our hot little hands by the end of the year.

Hope Collapse
Year of the Leper
Inkblot Records
2005
After Black Army Jacket hung up their coats, three-fourths of the band staged a mini reunion, blasting out this rampaging thrash/metal/grind amalgam.
You know exactly what you’re getting just reading the band’s list of influences: Terrorizer, Assuck, Repulsion, Siege, S.O.B (Hey it reads like our countdown of the greatest grind albums of all time!).
We all know Witte is a master blaster, but Hope Collapse lets him show off his impressive double bass work, a side of his playing he shows off all too infrequently. His blasts, rolls and fills anchor a head snapping, horn throwing collection of thrashed out jams. And rumor has it the band actually plans a sequel though Witte calls that “news to me.”
More infectious than a flesh eating virus, once Year of the Leper’s cold steel pierces your flesh you’ll be pleasantly scarred for life.

Birds of Prey
Weight of the Wound
Relapse
2006
Someone at Relapse must have realized that counting on Cretin to hold down the retard-core front (15 years to record a debut? Sheesh) may not be the strongest bet, so they hedged their meathead music portfolio with this collection of Southern metal all stars.
Witte anchors an ensemble of some of Virginia’s most talented musicians through an exercise in Southern fried death metal topped with heaping helpings of lonely chef’s special sauce. A combination of the Troma Films catalogue and Faulkner’s Southern grotesquerie, Birds of Prey is inbred, cretinous fun.

Municipal Waste
The Art of Partying
Earache
2007
For the last few years, thrashin’ has been Witte’s business. And business has been good.
It’s a match made in skater heaven, Witte holding down the fort for a pack of retro goofballs for whom thrash means Corrosion of Conformity, Suicidal Tendencies and DRI rather that Metallica, Megadeth or any of the other major label that dragged the sound down into the hell of platinum album sales, rampant addiction and questionable therapy sessions caught on film.
Instead Municipal Waste hold down thrash for the heshers who have patched up denim vests in their closets and a lasting affection for headbands. With songs about partying, zombies and partying zombies, Waste deflate today’s overly serious metal scene while still remembering to invest the time to write well crafted songs guaranteed to get a pit started, even if it’s just you moshing around your bedroom alone.

G&P review: Sino Basila

Sino Basila
Sino Basila
Black Box Recordings
Mike Hill is the Justin Broadrick of second gen noise rock.
Hill’s name many not carry the cultural currency of Remix Master J’s, but follow me here.
Both men took the foundation of what had gone before (Broadrick’s Swans obsession, Hill’s obvious familiarity with Unsane, Helmet and the AmRep catalogue) to make staggering, uncompromising music that was scathing in its social and emotional impact. Godflesh set the bruising tone for what would become industrial and experimental music while Hill scraped some of the most abrasive music of this early century out of the grime and rhythms of his native NYC in the truly ferocious Anodyne (co-conspirators Joshua Scott and Joel Stallings are currently getting their grind on in Defeatist).
Both guys also got all contemplative later in life, the godly Mr. ‘Flesh cranking out divine ambient drone in Jesu while Hill teamed up with former Lickgoldensky six string strangler Jamie Getz to channel their inner Robert Smith in Versoma.
But here’s where the comparison breaks down. While Broadrick has settled into a pastoral Green Acres existence in rural England, Hill quickly relapsed into newer and more scathing musical outlets. While Hill’s latest project, Tombs, has been getting tons of press and praise, let’s not overlook Sino Basila in the rush to crown the newest Anodyne
The third release from Hill’s own Black Box Recordings, Sino Basila presents two tracks of gargantuan, ponderous instrumental sludge stretching out over 25 tar pitted minutes.
Though Hill’s catalogue of AmRep releases is surely near and dear to his heart, first track, “Draconian,” shows the man didn’t miss out on those limited edition Melvin’s 7”s while he was at it. The 18-minute thud and drone of “The Iron Ghetto of Man” could easily sit along side Khanate’s first go-round or anything from the Grief catalogue in your record collection.
While the man of the million muses has already moved on to Tombs, it’s well worth picking up this hand-numbered, limited to 100 release.