G&P Review: Sete Star Sept

Sete Star Sept
Vinyl Collection 2010-2012
Fuck Yoga
Sete Star Sept's vinyl retrospective is not an album. It's a fucking endurance contest. Submitting yourself to 99 tracks of pure audio chaos is like sequentially running a marathon, competing in an iron man contest and then shimmying your way up Mt. Midoriyama. In a wilder and more primitive time, young boys would have skipped all that ritual mutilation, dream quest and hunting trophy bullshit and proved their masculine mettle by sitting through all 75 minutes of this record in a go.
What I'm trying to say is that Sete Star Sept's insane noise grind is not music. It's an experience. It's a bludgeoning phase shift that can, through pure sonic whiteout, force your brain into an altered--if not exactly heightened--state of perception. The deliberately obscure Japanese maniacs whip up a tympanum-rupturing racket that sounds like the infamous Discordance Axis/Merzbow live collaboration being sexually menaced by Gore Beyond Necropsy in some sleazy back alley with no hope of escape. The only contemporary band that comes close to this level of musical confrontation is thedowngoing.
Conventional notions of good or bad are completely inapplicable to Sete Star Sept's idiosyncratic noise. There will be plenty of hardened blastbeat heads who just won't be able to hang with the suffocating noise compiled here. I bet this stuff kills in a five to 10 minute bursts, but subjecting yourself to the album in its entirety will leave you beaten, bruised, sweaty and feeling hollow. Some, like me, may grow to enjoy the sensation but this just isn't a record i seeing gaining wider currency among the grind audience. The five minutes of sustained noise they pass off as "Confession Machine" is particularly piercing. All of that said, I guarantee you that you've probably never heard music that was this indifferent to conventional song structure or audience enjoyment. The target demographic for this one is going to be extremely limited, but if you have any pretensions of appreciating extremity in music, this is a band that needs to be front and center on your radar.

[Full disclosure: the label sent me a download.]

Blast(beat) from the Past: SMG/Carcass Grinder

SMG/Carcass Grinder
Split Tape
Revulsion
2010
Mieszko Talarczyk was not only Nasum's soul and principle songwriter, but he was also a studio wizard whose work drastically advanced the sonic form of grindcore, introducing bigger, punchier sounds. Talarczyk's studio work bolstered not only his band's sound, but gave full life to albums by Rotten Sound, Disfear and Expose Your Hate.
That's all well and good, but sometimes the shitty, tinny, punky sounding albums scratch that grinding itch better than the most pristine, big budget record. That's where albums like this 2010 split between Japan's Carcass Grinder and SMG from Malaysia come in. Each side of this cassette sounds like the bands skipped fineries like tuning and checking sound levels. Instead they set up in a big room in a cut rate studio, plugged in and just banged their shit the fuck out.
Carcass Grinder's side is so raw you can hear the amp humming in the background when the instruments cut out. It's a great trick because the guitar, itself, is completely buried under an avalanche of blown out, pounding snare and face first screaming. But it really works against the head-nodding thrash attack of "NFCB" or the Napalm Death-snarking "CG of Power," which may be the best song of the lot, is a staggering cheap shot straight to the jaw that leaves loose teeth and pooling blood in its too brief wake.
SMG are still raw as skinned knees after a skateboard wipeout, but their attack is more balanced. Each instrument stakes out its own space in the tornadic swirl of noise. When I start up a new blog in my next life, I'm totally stealing "Speed Shit Sayonara" for the name. It's just a bonus that it's actually a pretty kickass little song that entropically collapses in on itself in a wash of yowling guitar feedback, slamming shut the door on the album.
There are big name metal bands who probably spent more on catering than these two spend recording the whole album, but I doubt they achieved half the spontaneity and energy to be had here.

[Full disclosure: Revulsion sent me a review copy.]

You Grind...But Why?: Gate

Gate grind. It's what the Japanese duo does. Toshinori Otake doesn't mince words when I ask the Discordance Axis-inspired guitarist and vocalist why he itches to blast. For him, it's an innate drive and the sense of [synaesthetic?] achievement that comes from it.

"I think the grindcore is an ultimate music," Toshi said. "I have to work hard [so] I can play it. I can taste a great sense of achievement. Of course, I love fast musics!"

Orphan Land

You know that segment of The Animatrix “World Record” where sprinter Dan Davis literally runs until his muscles rend and he destroys his body in pursuit of an untouchable 100 meter record, leaping from the Matrix through to reality in the process? That’s pretty much the sensation of GridLink’s Orphan, a relentless 12 minute amplification of everything that made Amber Gray the greatest album of 2008. It's a transcendent, boundary shattering nugget that’s one minute longer than Amber Gray so kwitcherbitchin, clock watchers.
Mark it down on your calendars: at 9 p.m. Eastern time Jan. 5 the race for 2011 album of the year began – and possibly ended – when Jon Chang gave me an exclusive sneak peak at Orphan.
As with Hayaino Daisuki’s transition from Headbangers Karaoke Club Dangerous Fire to Invincible Gate Mind of the Infernal Fire Hell… Or Did You Mean Hawaii Daisuki?, Orphan is also a refinement of what GridLink had already been doing so damn well. It’s an intricately layered album that boasts a bigger sound, faster tempos and more melody in one emotionally wearying package. Some of these songs are almost hummable.
“I don’t want to say I really want to make a catchy record, but I really do,” said Chang, who said Deathspell Omega is the first band to really capture his attention since collaborator Takafumi Matsubara’s Mortalized. (And may I just say, meatspace Chang is an exuberant personality whose opinions aren’t quite as … let’s call them … impassioned [that’s a good word] as one would assume from internet interactions with him. I hope I didn't ruin some of your preconceived notions by humanizing him.)
“Takafumi said the first GridLink and Hayaino Daisuki were all brutality and he wanted to add intelligence,” Chang said.
For all the hubbub about Steve Procopio (ex-Human Remains, sometimes Discordance Axis substitute) and Ted Patterson’s (ex-Human Remains/Burnt by the Sun) addition, I listened to Orphan three times before I even remembered they had joined up. So don’t expect too many changes in that direction. Rather they just lay a foundation to for Matsubara to push what he was already doing in even more aggressive and intricate directions.
Just listening to Matsubara fillet his fingertips and drummer Bryan Fajardo crack tendons on the bullet train “Scopedog” is enough to set my joints to creaking with incipient arthritis. The songs are so unrelenting in their tempos (and the band insists everything must be recorded live with no punch-ins later) that Fajardo had to master a two footed blast to provide the requisite intensity, but the payoff is in the organic aggression that forms the album’s foundation.
“This record was a huge challenge for him,” Chang said. “This was a grueling record to make. Making any record like this is miserable.”
Vocally, Chang has broadened his repertoire to keep up with his cohorts’ demanding performances. Yes, the low end grunts are back, but so is and the same alleyway mugger come-on that graced Hayaino Daisuki’s “Shibito.” That means one of the finest lyricists in grind is screaming with enough clarity that you can occasionally hear what’s on his mind.
“The high vocals didn’t fit with everything I wanted to do. I went back and changed some of the parts out,” Chang said.
And what’s on his mind these days is more political than albums past. Inspired by his recent work on “real world military stuff” at his game developer day job, Chang said he wanted to attack issues like Islam (opener “Dar al-Harb,” “Flatworlder”[sorry for the original typo]), militarism and war (“The Last Red Shoulder”), the dislocation of technology and traveling (“Red Eye,” the title track) and other splinters of our shattered millennium.
But beyond that, interpretation is up to you, he said.
“I try to come to this with no expectations of what people will take away from it. What it meant for me isn’t going to be the same thing it meant for someone else to take away from it.”
Orphan is still slated for a late February or early March release. The first pressing will be vinyl, including a remixed version of Amber Gray that adds bass by Patterson. It will also come with a download of karaoke versions of the songs so you can stop embarrassing yourself in those Justin Bieber lip synch videos you’ve been posting to YouTube. A “very limited” run of CDs – possibly as few as 200 – will come later. And if you didn’t catch the band at Maryland Deathfest (which pretty much paid for the recording sessions for Orphan), don’t look for GridLink on your local bill. The combination of a sagging economy and the reality of being bi-continental means the band probably won’t venture beyond the confines of New York City.
But while you’re still absorbing Orphan, GridLink are already talking about the next album. Inspired by Red Dead Redemption’s soundtrack, Chang said that could involve acoustic grindcore – complete with blastbeats and death screams if Matsubara can get his head around the concept. Early experiments in that direction haven’t gelled as of it, Chang said.
Until they work that out - even if they never do - Orphan will provide plenty to dissect and explore for now, demanding repeated listens to tease out its subtle mysteries. If I didn’t already have a decade of emotions invested in The Inalienable Dreamless, this could have been my favorite album of all time. For some of you, it probably will be.

G&P Review: Unholy Grave

Unholy Grave
Grind Killers
Selfmadegod
While I’ve droned on and on about the lost art of the grindcore guitar solo, quite honestly until I heard Kazumi rocking out for the first half of Grind Killers opener “Confession” I had never given much thought to the grindcore drum solo. And I’ve decided I like it. I’m not saying we need to be dropping them Van Halen-style into every venue whether it’s appropriate or not, I’m just saying it was actually an engaging surprise and a hell of a way to kick off Unholy Grave’s latest in an Agathoclesian string of releases.

Unholy Grave – “Confession”

Recorded live in the studio with the help of Luc Favie of Dutch powerviolence mongers F.U.B.A.R., Grind Killers sounds better than some past efforts (Revoltage, I’m looking at you). There’s an infectious spontaneity to the whole shebang that does a lot to conceal the fact that (let’s be honest here) the full length album has never been Unholy Grave’s forte (again, Revoltage, I’m looking at you). Killer in an EP or split 7-inch context, Unholy Grave do have a tendency to wear out their welcome on occasion and Grind Killers does mill about, suffering from a lack of diversity at points. But the sheer blasting does enough to stave off the worst of the monotony. Unholy Grave are a band who are experienced enough to know what they’re about. And, hey, did you know they’re against terrorism?

G&P Review: Hayaino Daisuki

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

Hayaino Daisuki – “Shibito”

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

G&P Review: Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation

Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation
Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation
Six Weeks
I think the internet needs a new law akin to those penned by Mssrs. Poe and Godwin that stipulates any metal, no matter how brutal or vile, played by a pack of young Japanese ladies is just too damn adorable. Gallhammer gave blackened, crusty doom the Hello Kitty treatment last year and now estrogen-augmented quartet Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation bring the adorable to basement sleaze grindcore. Armed with the Insect Warfare seal of approval and some hefty verbiage, Flagitious Idiosyncrasy in the Dilapidation rip through 17 hunks of grind hewed from the same quarry that birthed 324.
Kyoko, the guitarist who penned all the band’s songs, has the focus and confidence to go full on raunch rock with “In the Gray Room” or to get her Stephen O’Malley on for the bulk of the droned out teaser “Unvoiced.” Bassist Kanako has the brass-bound ovaries to bite the classic bass line from Carcass’ “Ruptured in Purulence” on “Studeny Kilh” and Tomoko throws enough hiccups and twirls to keep the drums from being monotonous but too often she sounds like she’s whacking on a two-by-four with a pair of chopsticks.
And that’s the real hindrance here.
Unfortunately, these spunky punk salmon are swimming upstream against their own horrible production job. Self-produced, F.I.D. have no one to blame for the murk that swamps their otherwise awesome tunes. Everything gets shoved behind a trebly guitar and frontwoman Makiko’s yelps. Remember that killer bass line? Savor it because you won’t be hearing from Kanako again. She gets lost in the flattened murk that compresses any texture and dimension the songs may otherwise boast.
I bet these songs slay live, but those of us who don’t have the yen to fly over for a Tokyo basement party will just have to make do with our imaginations. But color me stoked for their second album.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Assault

Assault
Assault
H:G Fact
2001
Are you like me? Do you obsessively read Jon Chang’s liner notes for the Discordance Axis albums and become enraptured in his thoughts on font? The guy wrote a song called “Typeface,” f’chrissake. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who’s ever geeked out on font design and what it says about us and how they can manipulate our mindset. (C’mon raise your hands if you’ve watched Helvetica or if it’s still bouncing around your Netflix queue somewhere). Such is the power of the visual art, eh, Sunyata?
The point of all that being, I bought Assault’s self titled album a few years back completely unheard for two simple reasons: it’s Japanese and the interesting typesetting looked like something Chang would cook up (it’s not) considering his visionary design work for bands like 324 and Asterisk*.
I may have been wrong on the art, I was right to trust my instincts when it comes to the Japanese. Assault revel in the strain of no bullshit hardcore that will never go out of style as long as there’s a pissed off teen in a basement somewhere. No experimentation, no chug-a-lug breakdowns, just furious punk storming straight ahead. The songs have some metallic heft to them and just a sheen of melody in spots (“Method’s” moody opening) but they’re assaulted with reckless, energetic abandon that prizes punch over precision. Bullet-belted and leather pantsed guitarist Osamu looks like he stepped out of a bad Possessed or Destruction cover band circa 1991 while Kaoru slaps away at bass strings that sound like slackened phone lines and drummer Kentarou recklessly bangs at his kit. Frontman Satoru has such a charming Engrish delivery as he barges through a song like “Victims for Jackyls” (or “Veectimsssssaahhhhhh for Jackuuuulssaaahhhhhh”) that you can’t help but bang along.
Assault hit it and quit it in an easily digestible 20 minutes that makes multiple rotations of head down bangers like “Go for Lust” and the Motorhead-inflected “Object of the Attack” mandatory.

I know nothing about either the band or the album beyond that. It’s Japanese; it’s hardcore; it makes me smile.

Blast(beat) from the Past: Slight Slappers

Slight Slappers
Tomorrow…Will the Sun Shine Again?
H:G Fact
2005
The line “Tomorrow, will the sun shine again?” appears in Ryuhei Kitamura’s 2002 execution gone wrong flick Alive (itself based on a manga by Tsutomu Takahashi). I don’t know if there’s any direct connection between that and this platter of exquisite punk noise from Japan’s finest purveyors of power violence, but I just thought I’d throw it out there.
Everything about Tomorrow is raw, with a blown out production that highlights every pick squeal and cracked cymbal crash, but Slight Slappers manage to fight through that skateboard injury sound to craft genuinely hummable tunes. If the scabs were scraped off of “The Ocean, August and Blue Memories” and the song was re-recorded with cleaner guitars, it easily could be the hook for one of those annoying Carnival cruise commercials and just maybe they could stop abusing Iggy Pop’s junky odes.
For an album that’s less than a dozen minutes long, Tomorrow is laced with those kinds of touches. The headlong punk of “Sweet Box” drones off into a swirling melodic maelstrom that in turn segues into the bouncing faux-pop opening of “Flystar.” But the pinnacle of the Slight Slappers’ distorted melodi-punk approach is the close out title track, another commercial jingle candidate as performed by a power saw quintet with gently draped guitar lines of the sort Ben Carr bangs out with regularity.
Man is the Bastard famously coined the term West Coast Power Violence, but if they’d taken a moment to look to their right, there was another potent power violence storm brewing just across the ocean.

Blast(beat) From the Past: Gore Beyond Necropsy

Gore Beyond Necropsy
Noise-A-Go-Go
Relapse
1998
Like John Waters (whose movies are repeatedly sampled) directing an Anal Cunt video in a sleazy Shinjuku train station bathroom, Gore Beyond Necropsy’s out of print Relapse effort is a total train wreck of perversion and malfeasance set to some of the shortest grind tunes this side of Agoraphobic Nosebleed.
Don’t be fooled by the medical oddities art work, these Nipponese bangers are not same lame ass gore/pr0n puked out by self-congratulatory morons around some of the worst music imaginable. Instead, GBN gleefully wallow in all things deliberately retarded, grotesque and scatological though 59 songs pumped out in less than half an hour with a concise, lo-fi attack. If you dig Japanese grind and wish CSSO were just a tad more straight forward, you either already scrupulously collect GBN albums or you have a major hole in your collection.
Given Relapse’s current status as one metal’s most aggressive major labels, it’s refreshing to remember Matt Jacobson et al used to be just one more upstart scrounging the globe for undiscovered gems. While this out of print effort may not quality as a bona fide lost classic, it’s a must for fans of Seth Putnam and J-grind. Hell, it’s one of the first CDs I stole … umm …. permanently borrowed when I was working radio in college.
If you don’t believe me, those mind-reading bastards at Cephalochromoscope beat me to the post (with downloadable goodness) on this one and pretty much said all you need to know. So head over there and give it a listen.

G&P review: Gallhammer (Better late than never edition)

Gallhammer
Ill Innocence
Peaceville
I meant to review these delightful doom pixies several months ago, y’know when this album actually came out. But after scouring several stores and being back ordered (twice) I just now got my hands on this solid, if rough, mash of Amebix and Hellhammer. I thought about skipping it, but Terrorizer just gave them a cover, so why not?
Yes, these Japanese sprites have a deep love of the crust, and that’s we’re gonna focus on. Instead of being yet another retread doom band or a novelty chick act, Gallhammer are mix up all of their influenced on their first international LP to craft a sound that is endearing in its wide eyed naiveté
The latest version of “Speed of Blood” comes off a little crisper if no edgier and “Delirium Daydream,” with its strummed acoustic intro, and “Ripper in the Gloom” chug along at mid-tempo punk speeds with crusty, grarled guitar lines screeching through the feedback laden mix. But one of the album’s most delightful moments is the third track, “Blind My Eyes,” a rawking punk number that channel’s Melt-Banana right down to the charming chirped Pokemon vocals.
The whole 50 minute affair is bookended by straight up sludgy doom such as the aptly titled penultimate track, “SLOG,” an eight minute dirge that goes spelunking in the caves where Stephen O’Malley conjures demon drones. The not quite as aptly titled closer “Long Scary Dream” gets two out of three right. It is indeed lengthy and has a wonderful somnambulistic quality that makes it a great soundtrack to sit down with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, but it fails to evolve from mildly interesting phantasmagoria to outright nightmare.
Overall, Gallhammer have improved leaps and bounds over The Dawn of... proving they are not a novelty act stage managed by Peaceful and turning in an album, with a stunning all white layout, that would sit capably along side the other punky doomsters in your collection like Unearthly Trance.