You Grind…But Why?: Digby Pearson

There’s a pretty good chance that none of us would be here getting our grind on if Digby Pearson hadn’t stepped up to get the blastbeaten ball rolling. The Earache majordomo is directly responsible for bringing the first, defining wave of grinding goodness to the BPM-starved masses. Napalm Death, Carcass, Terrorizer and Brutal Truth all owe their careers to Pearson’s backing. Regardless of what you may think of his post-grind forays into other musical niches and the public falling out with many of those early bands, the guy was there and played a crucial role at a time when nobody thought there was even a market, let alone a name, for this stuff. So what got his grind gears growling nearly 25 years ago?

“The motive for what the bands created and what Earache supported in the early days was pretty much just to inflict the maximum NOISE possible onto the general public,” Pearson said. “Maybe even cause the demise of all ‘normal’ music, that would have been a bonus. I had some lofty, crazy ideas back then, to be sure, and was very single-minded and obsessive about it, even with scant resources.
“At no point was a recognised genre that would become highly popular envisioned. That was a laughable concept in 1986-8.
“People forget it was more or less avant-garde, highly experimental music during that explosive first couple of years. From Godflesh to Carcass, the motive was to warp minds.
“There were some ‘noisy’ atonal anarcho/HC punk bands around, even some extremely noisy indie acts...but Earache encouraged its bands to push the envelope way further into extreme metallised noise --and to hell with the consequences.
“Scum itself was described as ‘hyperspeed thrash’ by me on its release in 1987 (because thrash was the then-current most extreme form of metal).
“ ‘Grindcore’ first appeared as a genre description in September 1989 on the sticker on Earache’s Grindcrusher comp.”

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?

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.]

Death by “Manipulation:” A Sneak Peak at Wormot’s Impending Dirge

[Update: I've heard three other tracks from Dirge now, and frankly I'm mystified Rasyid thinks they'll lose fans. While the songs are uniformly awesome, I'm left wondering if it's not too much of what we expected. Is that something on their end, or a function my of sky high expectations. I'm still pondering that, but I guess we'll all hash it out in May. Meanwhile, discuss amongst yourselves.]

I don’t know, realistically, how much you can extrapolate about a new album from a single tune – especially one that falls just shy of the minute mark – but Wormrot’s “Manipulation” has had me grasping at straws for a week now, tossing out poorly founded conjecture as to what the upcoming Dirge may have to offer.
The song whips you around like Jason Voorhees hefting a sleeping bag, and I've dissecting it like a Cold War Kremlinologist poring over Politburo photos vainly trying to discern who’s in Khrushchev’s good graces this week ever since Earache honcho Digby Pearson sent the track straight from the band’s marathon two day, 30 song mixing and recording session.
“Dirge was recorded, mixed and completed in 2 days. This little fact tickles me no end,” Pearson said.
Guitarist Rasyid breaks it down by the numbers for you:
“For those of you who likes statistics, Fit and I recorded our parts on the same day from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” he said. “Fit did his drums in 2 hours 30 minutes (no breaks), I recorded 2 layers of guitars in 6 hours (minus 3 hours because of a recording setback which led me to re-record 11 songs, plus a 3-cigarettes smoking break), and Arif did his vocals sparingly at home in a total span of 2 days if I’m not wrong.”
Since Pearson and I talked, Earache has posted the song for all to enjoy (which some of you with sharper eyes already noticed), but let me walk you through my first listen or 12:

• The first 15 seconds, well shit, this is kind of boring. Why did Wormrot slow down to skipping skate punk? I guess the sophomore jinx caught up with them. Oh shit, that’s just a prelude…
• From 0:16 to 0:20 blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast. Why is that steam shovel pounding pylons into my noggin? And why do I like it so much?
• From 0:21 to 0:25 sweet merciful Shiva can Rasyid write a ripping, galloping riff. It’s like the best parts of “Born Stupid” condensed.
• From 0:26 to 0:30 Wormrot make the case for forming a killer sludge band under another moniker if this whole grind shtick doesn’t work out.
• From 0:31 to the end, yet another sweet ass galloper of a riff over a giddy-up, hiyo-Silver bit of drum gymnastics. A lesser band would have made two or three songs from the bits Wormrot stitched together, which they toss out like a newly minuted rapper's benjamins at the strip club.

What all this may augur for Dirge, coming this spring, the band isn’t saying.
“Personally, I do not want to reveal anything about how the album would sound like cuz i want it to suckerpunch you like how Abuse did,” Rasyid said. “All I can say is that this is unlike Abuse. We’ll lose some listeners with this one, but I’m sure it’ll please many grindheads. But fuck yea 'Manipulation' is a fun song to write!”
The band you guys named the fourth best in the world (and they’re humorously annoyed at losing out to GridLink, btw) is not shy about admitting to feeling the pressure when the time came to ready their second album. Where Abuse exploded out of nowhere, Dirge will come burdened by everyone’s expectations as well as the imprimatur of Earache shoving them out into the public eye.
“Dude, we started feeling the pressure the first second Earache knocked on our door,” Rasyid said. “Abuse was a labour of almost a year of finding our own feet with the band and writing at our own pace. We can never recreate Abuse or the painful yet memorable journey it took us three. It was almost the case of the right release at the right time for the right people.”
As the hoary musical adage goes, bands have their entire lives to write their first album and about a year to write the second. Coming off their first taste of international touring, Rasyid said the band faced the prospect of hitting the studio without an album’s worth of songs in hand. Where the guitarist would previously hash out songs at his leisure, later working over the parts with drummer Fitri, Wormrot took a more collaborative approach to crafting Dirge.
“We tried this new approach whereby we come into the studio with nothing and the first question we’ll ask each other is ‘so how do you want this song to sound like’ and we’ll pick a reference song or two from any band, throw in as many ideas and try out as many possible riffs and drums patterns,” Rasyid said. “Maybe I’ll start with a riff and Fit joins in, or vice versa. It turned out to be more organic and personal: each of us talking and listening to each other, having fun creating a song from nothing, a better flow and transition in song. I realized that we had captured the true meaning of ‘jamming’ in the short period of time we had. I have to be honest that when we were writing, I was skeptical cuz I am not used to letting the steering wheel go and see where it brings us, but after hearing the final product, I’m so proud of what we had accomplished.”
Dirge is due this spring and the first run of CDs will also come packed with a DVD that includes footage from their North American and European tours as well as in-studio footage, including Rasyid’s impressive command of Malay profanity.
“Yes, I will teach you a Malay profanity,” Rasyid said. “It’s good.”

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.]

So just to clarify...

... the mixtape I did for Invisible Oranges was "mostly ... garbage" but Earache sees fit to squander its legacy by afflicting us with vapid, nutless atrocities such as this. Which one of us seems to be wallowing in garbage?
I kid, I kid.
Sorta.
Anyway, learn the secret history of how G&P unwittingly played a humble role in Wormrot's well deserved new deal with the venerable, though no longer vital, grindcore label.

Thanks to Atanamar for the heads up. And as he pointed out, the punch line is Earache reps downloaded Abuse from Mediafire to check out the band. Way to respect those copyright laws, guys.

Ear Worm

Vengeance is Mine got the drop on me on this one, but Wormrot have announced they have signed to Earache. Guitarist Rasyid let that slip a couple months ago when I interviewed him but asked me to keep that off the record until they could make their own announcement. Now the word is out. Aside from a reason to give a fuck about Earache for the first time in about 15 years (my last foray into their recent catalogue didn't end well), this is a well deserved boost for a band that released the single best album of 2009 but was somehow still criminally slept on by too many people. I'm still busy rocking Abuse and they've already got me salivating for album number two.

G&P review: Narcosis

Narcosis
Best Served Cold
Earache
The Narcosis boys could really learn a few lessons in P.R. Slogging through their meandering liner notes to discography Best Served Cold, I’m left with the impression they didn’t particularly care for most of their recordings, they couldn’t hold a line up together and that the band never had a clear identity or vision. But I guess if you’re reading that, they’ve already got your $15 so the joke’s on you.
Time was when Earache equaled quality grind. If you’re nostalgic and think Best Served Cold marks some return to the glory days of 1989, you’re going to be disappointed. I couldn’t tell you the last Earache album I bought and I’m beginning to remember why.
These young Brits clearly imbibed Napalm Death and Unseen Terror with their mother’s milk and a few pints of bitter, and while they make an adequate racket and near sound barrier speeds, I just never get a firm sense of who or what Narcosis were actually trying to be and after reading their liner notes, I’m not sure they ever had a clue either.
While Narcosis in various incarnations was a deliciously bass-heavy grind outfit, they just never gelled as songwriters to make their particular brand of noise compelling, especially on the 10 minutes spent feeding a gerbil into a woodchipper that was “With a Sickening Thud.”
Lame attempts at ha-ha funny song titles that even a post-coma Seth Putnam would leave on the cutting room floor (“If Being a Cunt was People, You’d be China,” “Just Because They Say Christ When You Walk Into a Room Doesn’t Make You Jesus”) just come off as tired and derivative. While, the faux Carcass and Man Is the Bastard artwork inside is indeed clever it’s just one more symptom of the same disease.
Too often this overlong collection becomes the grindcore equivalent of elevator music: something that just buzzes in the background.
While Best Served Cold is certainly economical in these tough times, dishing up nearly 80 minutes of grind over 51 tracks, only the songs from the Romance album, which are smartly placed front and center, are really going to be worth repeated listening. Many of the EP and horrifically tinny live tracks collected here also just regurgitate songs you may or may not have heard the first go round. Really, how many versions of “Screaming I Hate You While I Slit My Own Throat” does one person need?
Money’s tight these days so Brutalex has agreed to share. Save your ducats.

The Dirty (Baker's) Dozen 7: Terrorizer

Terrorizer
World Downfall
Earache
1989
Almost overshadowed by the various members’ subsequent bands, Terrorizer’s World Downfall, recorded posthumously, is a roaring, blasting furnace of punk-infused grind.
No experimentation like labelmates Brutal Truth, and tighter than the first two incarnations of guitarist Jesse Pintado’s future partners in grind, Napalm Death. Instead World Downfall is a 36-minute whiplash ride from the moment you hit play. Pete Sandoval’s relentless drumming would later earn him a spot on the throne for deathsters Morbid Angel.
Coming from the racially charged cauldron of L.A. – which would explode just three years later – Terrorizer raged against all that was wrong with the world with short jabs of vicious metal and punk.
World Downfall’s DNA is found in a legion of younger bands playing straight ahead, ferocious grindcore. Lesser bands have spent careers endlessly aping Terrorizer’s sound, but very few can rival the original.
Culturally, the three-fourths Hispanic collective was also an important step in shattering the white boys’ club that had been metal to that point, introducing a powerful new voice and experience into the mix.The dead did indeed rise in 2006, this time with Resistant Culture’s Tony Rezhawk at the mic, but the band had lost a step or two in the intervening 17 years and Darker Days Ahead just lacked that verve that propelled World Downfall. Unfortunately, Pintado died only weeks after the album was released, but his work with Napalm Death as well as World Downfall has secured his place in grindcore Valhalla