Three’s Company: Reconfigured and Reinvigorated Backslider Are All About That Bass, Motherfucker

Photo by Suren Karapetyan

Sorry, two's company, and three's an adult movie.
John Turturro in Brain Donors, 1992

Philadelphia grind-violence dervish duo Backslider has brewed an exquisitely nasty racket since 2008 with the bare necessities of drums, guitar and throat-rending shrieks. And guitarist Logan and drummer Patrick were content. Early failed experiments in adding a third wheel only cemented the twosome’s desire to keep things concise. Anybody who braved the glass shard maelstrom of their audio assault would be hard pressed to argue otherwise.
Backslider could have continued cranking out immaculate music based on the binary concept and we all would have applauded slack jawed (just as soon as we recovered from the concussions they inflicted). But earlier this year Backslider unexpectedly rounded out their assault by bringing in bassist Jake.
“At first we were pretty much not willing budge on the topic. Jake was pretty persistent,” Patrick said. “I lived in Florida for a year in 06-07 and met Jake during that time. He's been in tons of bands, toured and recorded a bunch so he's no rookie. I can remember seeing him at a show before he joined in Philly, and him asking about it. I remember explaining to him that we were so used to operating as a two piece, it was more of an issue of that than anything and I had no doubt he could do it, but we would just jam and see how it went. Jake is a capable and great bass player so I knew he could do it no problem. After a few practices we caved.”
Jake was even more dogged about earning a seat in Backslider’s van after he heard the impressive Consequences album.
“I feel like at that point Patrick and I felt like it was time to branch out and start taking things more seriously,” Logan said. “We had a couple jams with him and it went really well. He's been doing this shit for years and he's no weakling.”
With Consequences, Backslider had broadened their repertoire, breaking up the speed freak brutality to repeatedly whack you upside the head with a sock full of Sacajawea dollars, taking their time to savor your pleas for mercy.
“I distinctly remember a conversation that Patrick and I had a couple of years ago, around the time that we were writing for the Nimbus Terrifix split 7-inch, that we decided we don't need boundaries and if we wanted to play fast, we were gonna play fast as fuck, but also if we wanted to play slow, we were gonna do that as well,” Logan said. “Since then, we've opened ourselves up to many different styles, and I think that we're better musicians now than we've ever been. It's more satisfying and fun, the world doesn't need any more 'powerviolence' clones.”
In that same spirit of no frontiers and no fucks given, adding Jake to the roster has also allowed Backslider to stretch their musical muscles and explore tones and timbres previously untested.
“As far as writing, his involvement and ideas have really opened things up for us, we're able to do things that we've never even thought to try before, and it sounds pretty unreal,” Patrick said. “The heaviness is more pronounced and the range of tones we're able to get balances out the sound, so much so that I wish we would've had a competent bassist all along.”

Maladapted Motherfuckers.

Backslider’s new configuration will get its first in your face work out soon once the newly minted trio puts the final touches on the upcoming album Motherfucker.
“As of right now we're about 75 percent finished with writing for the LP, it's going to be called Motherfucker and it's going to be just that,” Logan enthused. “There are a lot of things going on in these songs that are completely uncharted territory for us and they seem more like actual songs that move and grow as opposed to fastcore farts. There's still plenty of blazing fast hardcore but the arrangements are more prolonged and abstract. I don't recall a lot of the writing process for any of our records, except for the heated arguments during the Consequences practices. I can say that, for me at least, this is the most fun it's been to write for Backslider.”
After some personal and intraband turmoil leading up to Consequences, Patrick also said Motherfucker sees Backslider at their most focused. Not only has adding Jake rounded out the band’s sound, but his voice in the practice space is also pushing Backslider to be their best, the drummer said.
“I just put together a ‘discography so far’ of all of our material, and I like all of it. But, I think what we've got coming is crushing it all,” Patrick said. “Yeah, the Consequences writing period was a rough spot for us. We were busy as a band and also had a lot going on personally at the time too. It was our first longer release and we beat the crap out of ourselves getting it together. We were satisfied with the result. I think not only having a bass to pull the low end together but, having a third voice and opinion also is refreshing for us. The writing process has been fun so far, and coming together really well.”

G&P Review: Jesus Cröst

Jesus Cröst
1986
Bones Brigade
The worst aspect of the quadrennial World Cup feets-ball tournament is suffering through that one coworker who has suddenly declared him- or herself grand poobah of all soccer, loudly pontificating on the arcane advancement rules gleaned from Wikipedia. I’ll never understand how the United States was able to lose its way into each round. (And quite honestly I don’t care because, duh, it’s soccer and I’m an American [USA! USA! USA! USA!]). But for those of you with fond memories of Paul the Octopus and a quarter hour to kill, Rotterdam soccer hooligans Jesus Cröst penned an ode to the 1986 World Cup on their third album.
Musically, the dynamic Dutch duo has not advanced the powerviolent arts significantly with 1986. In fact, there’s a monochromatic quality to writing on the 22 songs that blurs them into a somewhat long and confusing whole (Hey, just like a soccer match! Perhaps it’s a meta commentary on the experience of watching the game?).
Taking a cue from Macabre, each song is dedicated to a different footballer of yore, shining 50 second spotlights on players that give the album a strong narrative quality even if the music is frustratingly lacking in diversity. It’s a great idea, but one similar song careens into another. It’s like watching a game from way up in the nosebleeds where you can’t see jersey numbers, so the action all becomes a formless smudge of people milling about way down on the field. Jesus Cröst’s past two albums were hacked from the same blast, pause, scream, blast foundation but they felt more invigorated and propulsive than 1986. So it kind of sucks that this is their farewell effort knowing that they have so much more to give.
America’s periodic, herpes-like flare up of soccer fever has passed, but if you’re a football fan with a passion for powerviolence then Jesus Cröst have the (oddly specific) cultural crossover you’ve been waiting for. 1986 is not a bad album, but you’ve heard this done better, even by this band. 

[Full disclosure: I received a download for review.]

A Bastard Noise: Power Violence Lives on in a New Generation

“No Comment! Manpig! Capitalist Casualties! Man is the Bastard! West Coast Power Violence! Let’s fucking go! Kick ass!”
And with that, the term power violence entered the hardcore lexicon. The loose confederation of California bands had little in common stylistically beyond a penchant for brevity. They certainly didn’t set out to spark a musical revolution. But 20 years after Man is the Bastard shouted the term into existence, a host of up and coming bands are taking what was once an inside joke to brand outcasts in the California hardcore scene and turning it into an ongoing and constantly evolving musical movement of its own.
Though the term power violence has been “commodified and bastardized” in the two decades since its introduction, Robby Komen of Sea of Shit still sees the spirit of that first run of bands in the wave of contemporary practitioners.
“It was definitely a time/era specific thing in its original incarnation (just like anything, it has to start somewhere), but I do believe there are contemporaries that earnestly share the same ethos and ideologies that unified these bands in the past,” Komen said.
Attracted by power violence’s aggression and malleability, a modern wave of neoviolence bands are taking short shocks of hardcore festooned with prominent bass and exploring all of the possible permutations, keeping it from going stale and extinct. Sprawling across the globe and adapting to fit new musical ecosystems, power violence is more vibrant and fertile than Man is the Bastard and their cohorts ever could have imagined.

Glass Half Empty: Pessimiser's Legacy Lives Miserably Ever After

 

In retrospect, Pessimiser/Theologian Records was probably doomed to an early grave by virtue of the collective weight of addiction and bad choices embodied by its roster of toe-stubbing glumsters. While most famous for the incredibly awesome collection of Cry Now, Cry Later compilations, owner Chris Elder, also of Despise You, collected a cross-genre stable of uniquely miserable fucks who bled out their sins for our audio pleasure. Unlike a label like Willowtip, which traces its origin to a small cadre of like minded tech-death/grinders, Pessimiser was all over the genre map. Its constituents were united less by sonic similarities than they were by dismal outlook. Whether you cried now or cried later, the goal was to burrow deep into those shadowed recesses where the worst aspects of your soul rot, a polluted parade of junkie odes, misanthropic memories and downer days.

Insect Warfare

I know this one is going to be a stretch from the outset: defending one of grind's most reviled acts of the last decade. But I fucking love The Locust. The bug be-masked California spazzcore space aliens sounded like David Cronenberg directing a remake of Tetsuo the Ironman from a script by William Gibson that was edited in Edgar Wright's trademark staccato chop style.
What I find fascinating is that for as much shit as The Locust took, most of their tools were commonplace: marrying Agoraphobic Nosebleed’s penchant for deliberate provocation and awkward confrontation with Gasp’s chemical-colored, free-form psych-violence turbulence. Yes, they often get tagged as harbingers of the dreaded "white belt grin," but The Locust, clad in their sublimely absurd bug suits, had so much more going on than the multitude of spazzy also-rans ever conceived of.
My library of The Locust albums has a couple small holes, but here's an album by album discussion of why the band is worthy of your respect.

G&P Review: Detroit

Detroit
Reality Denied
Grindcore Karaoke
Splitting wax with Robocop is proving to have been an instructive, if not pivotal moment, for Alberta’s Detroit. Every release since has been an evolutionary leap as Detroit comes to better grips with their modern twist on grind and power violence. For their first long player, Reality Denied, the band tries their hand at closing with not just one but two different soundscapes, including the title track, that nod back to splitmates Robocop, even if neither really captures that same unsettling Cronenberg/Tsukamoto vibe that undergirds the Maine bastards' best work. Whether it’s the shrieking “Stand In” or the feedback frazzled windup of “Exhaustion,” the extra girth of a full length gives Detroit the space to play and as a result Reality Denied is probably the band’s most assured and confident release to date.
Wonderfully shitty coffee can snare beats rattle against vocals that nibble at the heels of J. Randall and J.R. Hayes. Driving it all, buried in the live in the room mix, is a slashing guitar that whips at the other participants like a dogsled driver bringing the lash. The whole thing rides that kamikaze line between collapsing under its own weight and punching through your wall to grab you by the throat. It’s a precarious position Detroit have staked out, but when they cut loose into the blasting end piece of “Alone” or the way the stumbling, staccato “Passion Devoid” slams into the grinding “Leviathan” synergy elevates their garage punk thrashings. Detroit have always impressed me, but like their namesake city’s finest muscle cars, the band has a found another gear and really revved themselves up for .
Reality Denied

G&P Review: God Harvest/Cogs and Sprockets

God Harvest/Cogs and  Sprockets
Split
Tack Head
We're riding the cusp of a glorious noisegrind renaissance as bands like thedowngoing and Water Torture lift and reinvigorate the blurring blasts of earliest Anal Cunt, select choices of the Gore Beyond Necropsy catalog and Insect Warfare's insane bubble gum pink final record to produce blown out white noise monstrosities  of ear stabbing abrasiveness that's extreme even by grindcore's antisocial standards.
Joining that elite cadre is the glowing nuclear crater left behind one man ICBM factory Cogs and Sprockets, who tortures man and machine alike in service of his irradiated song suites. It's all banshee wailing recitations of the world's myriad and most conspicuous failures punctuated by exclamation marks of screeching stop/start guitar protestations. The 7-inch's sleeve claims there are six separate songs on offering here, but that's like trying to count individual warheads when you're being clusterbombed. The Cogs and Sprockets side of this split proudly proclaims that "grindcore rears its ugly head" and this motherfucker delivers like FedEx. Meet your new favorite nightmare.
Flipside, Florida quintet God Harvest would be considered fleet-footed in any other context in which they were not in a police lineup with Cogs and Sprockets. Vocalist Tyler Toth was probably brushing drywall out of his chompers for a couple weeks after this recording session because he devours scenery like Al Pacino visiting the crystal meth factory on free sample day. His compelling delivery and phrasing have a shade of J.R. Hayes about them and that really gives God Harvest character. He's lucky because the musical elements of the band give him plenty to work with. God Harvest are not averse to occasionally slowing things down, cruising by to admire the carnage in their wake before flipping your twitching corpse the bird and stomping the gas again. That keeps their side consistently engrossing. God Harvest can hit you from a variety of angles but they really seem to love that sneak attack.

[Full disclosure: Tack Head sent me a review copy.]

Blast(beat) from the Past: Cyborg

Cyborg
Cyborg
Deep Six
2011
If you are a hardworking, blue collar member of Weekend Nachos and you just got home after punching out from your double shift at the local power violence factory pressing out jam after killer jam, just how do you work out the day's frustrations? Why, you crack the frosty beverage of your choice, start up a kickass side project and bless with world with even more power violence. That's the Cyborg story in a nutshell.
While there is nothing here that will shock fans of the members' day job, Cyborg's nine songs nudge away from Weekend Nacho's junior Man in the Bastard glower to copiously pilfer from all velocities of the Siege canon (particularly "Grim Reaper's" slow motion misery--no saxophone, though). What makes Cyborg especially interesting is the way the flip the script on the hoary punk and grind trope of starting a song all slow and blasting away to the finish. Instead, these more machine than men power mongers love to kick your teeth in from the handshake and then double foot the brakes to slowly loom over your bleeding body to gloat over the damage at the end. When they crank things down, the elephantine heaviness of the bass just rumbles over the scene like a breaking thunderstorm on a windswept plain. It's a small stylistic tic, but it's enough to jolt some freshness into a 20 year old style.
And Cyborg have certainly drunk deep of hardcore's storied history because they spend most of the EP's runtime pissing all over its treasured conventions. They rant about being that guy with no interest in drinking or drugs but who really hates those preachy straight edge assholes ("Pointless Rant" -- and boy can I relate to that one), obnoxious vegans who lord their imaginary superiority over you ("90's Song") and tatted up dickbags who like to pose and preen and bully others at shows ("Tough Love"). All of that and the definitive word on limeade's superiority to lemonade.
Cyborg is that rare side project I think I actually like more than the regular band.

G&P Review: Beatriz Carnicero

Beatriz Carnicero
No Reces
Bandcamp
Continuing the theme of kickass albums Andrew should have addressed back in 2012, Uruguayan fastcore/power violence gauchos Beatriz Carnicero run the Infest back catalogue through a modern filter and puke out pure awesomeness on the other side with killer little EP No Reces (No Prayers). Beatriz Carnicero sling the kind of high protein power violence that doesn't linger beyond 60 seconds (copious samples included) as the band reels off 15 songs in a comfortably re-playable eight minutes.
Ubiquitous samples aside, Beatriz Carnicero do not deign to grant you the mercy of any buildup or decompression. They body slam straight into the various songs with concussive force. This is grinding hardcore played with all the subtlety of a multicar pileup on the freeway. The songs, themselves, are universally fragmented and jagged, lacking any smooth edges to ease your landing when they drop you back to earth.
The only knock I have on No Reces (and this is getting into seriously nitpicky personal pet peeve territory) is that they slap the overused Howard Beale freakout rant from Network at the very end, but even that's not enough to mar the amazing music Beatriz Carnicero are serving up. It just encourages me to stop it 15 seconds early and roll it back to song number one yet again.

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

G&P Review: Water Torture/thedowngoing

Water Torture/thedowngoing
Nerve Altar Split
Grindcore Karaoke/Nerve Altar
If I had my shit together (I know, I know; just pretend, ok?), somebody would have gotten bumped from my best splits of 2012 list because this violent and violenter pairing towers over the landscape like a classic Godzilla/King Ghidorah smackdown. No matter who wins, Tokyo's ass is getting leveled. Water Torture and thedowngoing are two bands at the peak of their abilities arbitrarily laying waste to the landscape.
If you haven't jumped on the Water Torture bandwagon yet (and seriously, what more does VII need to do to get your attention?), this is a perfect entry point because the bass/drum neo-violence duo have never been tighter or more abrasive. This is a bad mood, morning after hangover, waking up with your skanky ex kind of bummer trip, drool faced, red eyed and pissed off at the world. The secret to Water Torture's downtrodden groove is their blend of Iron Lung stumble getting electro shocked to the balls courtesy of The Endless Blockade. It's a devastating, thoroughly modern combination that nods to masters old and new while still leaving its own indelible mark.
Flipside, Aussie dervishes thedowngoing play a cold eyed game of chicken, piling all seven of their songs into a single, unrelenting five minute track. There is no off ramp, no exit and they dare you to blink. Musically, the duo are picking right up from where the awesome ATHOUSANDYEARSOFDARKNESS and their contribution to Monomaniac left off. In Water Torture, thedowngoing have finally found a band that can match their auditory killing spree. These are two of the most hostile, abrasive and uncompromising bands working today and each need only two members to drown out every other band that fancies themselves extreme. So yeah, I was too slow to get this one lined up for 2012, but 2013 isn't so old that we can't fondly look back one more time before we step forward.

They Scream Protest: F.U.B.A.R. Shake the Seven Year Itch

It's been a long seven years since Justification of Criminal Behaviour, but F.U.B.A.R. made it seem like time was flying this year when they dropped the absolutely crushing Lead Us to War. It's a Large Hadron Collider of an album that slams together particles of grindcore and power violence into a universe-shattering big bang of sonic violence. The band never intended to wait this long between albums, but it's a paltry price to pay for an album this crushing.
And it's not like F.U.B.A.R. have been sitting at home twiddling their thumbs for the better part of a decade either. The Dutch band has been steadily dropping split releases, jumping in the van for the occasional tour and generally just taking life as it comes.
"Well … working on a full length got pushed back a couple of times over the last years," bassist Bas said. "It seemed like there were always offers and ideas for split releases. We did a couple of  tours, some kids were born, some physical wear and tear here and there (we don’t get any younger you know). We had  some delay."
Part of the delay  was that F.U.B.A.R. make a clear distinction between how they write to fill a single side of a 7-inch and how they pace and plan a full length record. And anyone who's put on Lead Us to War will appreciate their thoughtfulness.
"To do splits is much easier," Bas said. "For a split 7-inch you need, well, five to seven songs. For a split LP you need 10 to 15 song. But for a full length you need up to 20 or 25 songs depending on the running time. Also we hold on to the belief that a 7-inch is meant for seven minutes of all or nothing. These songs are more easy to write compared to longer songs with different structures etc., which we think we need on a full length with a running time of, well, close to half an hour to keep things interesting."
The current crappy state of the world gave F.U.B.A.R. plenty of lyrical fodder to fill that half an hour as well, Bas said. While F.U.B.A.R.  plot firmly in the middle of the current wave of political grindcore, there's something about the way the band divvies up the lyrics between three vocalists that gives them an honesty and a sincerity that's lacking in a lot of other bands that puke out pro forma political rants.
Speaking of ranting: "We write about what keeps us busy, worries us, what makes our minds boil with rage and fury and make us spew our anger in big chucks to those who try to force their sugar coated happy colored lies and  hatred and prejudices down our throats every day in TV commercials, and happy faced game shows hosted by perfectly shaped females who try to sell us what we don’t need in the name of consumption and give insecure children a reason to start developing eating disorders, lying politicians, soap stars and other scum that should be dismantled," Bas said. "And we try to translate this into sound."
One of the things I love most about Lead Us to War is just how freaking gigantic it sounds. It's a throwback to the mid-90s when I was really getting into grind and bands like Phobia and Excruciating Terror were dropping albums with huge guitar tones. To get that titanic sound, F.U.B.A.R. turned to producer  J.B. Van der Wal, bassist for Dr. Doom, another band that knows something about sounding gigantic. Bas said F.U.B.A.R.  knew he would be someone who could make sure the album didn't come out "too controlled."
"We really wanted to record with JB," he said. "We  all know the productions JB did and,  we were looking forward to record with him. He does the job very well. [F.U.B.A.R.  vocalist] Luc is a good friend of JB, so it was an easy set up. The whole recording process was very relaxed. For us it could not have been better and were more than happy with the result. JB is a dude who knows his craft and knows how to make a record sound the way it should sound."
While seven years may have been a bit of a wait for Lead Us to War, Bas said the band is already working on follow up material, but nothing has been pinned down for sure yet. Until then, we'll just have to wait patiently to see where F.U.B.A.R. lead us next.

G&P Review: F.U.B.A.R.

Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
Blazing Saddles
1974

F.U.B.A.R.
Lead Us to War
Hammerheart
The sagacious assortment of anonymous eminences we collectively refer to as "they" assure us that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Accepting that, ad arguendo, as a truism, my ventricles must be near to bursting with joy (or Five Guys bacon cheese dogs) because it's been seven years since F.U.B.A.R. graced us with Justification of Criminal Behaviour. Sure, they've popped a squat and dropped a bucket full of splits in the long years since, but there's something special about getting a full 30 minute experience from the Dutch power violence-inflected grindcore gang.
F.U.B.A.R. albums always sound wonderfully huge, and Lead us to War is another apatosaurus-sized stomp through 21st century sickness and malaise, courtesy of Dr. Doom bassist J.B. Van der Wal's production job. It also showcases a band in consummate control of their art. While they're not shattering any molds (though "Misplaced Faith" sneaks in some apocalyptic pschedelia and hip hop delivery), F.U.B.A.R. know how to play with time and tempo to generate the largest impact and they're not shy about swiping tidbits from every branch of the speedy punk family tree to make their point.
And they'd really appreciate if you pay attention to that point. Fourth track "I Scream Protest" is the best key to unlocking F.U.B.A.R.'s Cerberus-headed vocal assault on the eroding foundations of civilization. Faced with the iniquity and inequality of a globalized world, the song is a rallying cry to cast down the demons of avarice, violence and intolerance. Those themes may be familiar to the point of tired cliche, but F.U.B.A.R. manage to convey a sincerity that earns them a pass even from my cynical, shrunken Grinch heart.
In another wonderful touch, Lead Us to War feels like it was sequenced for vinyl, with the title track in the middle providing a satisfying emotional closer to what would be Side A before taking a deep breath, flipping the platter and diving back into the grind. F.U.B.A.R. won't lead you to war, but give them a chance and they'll lead you somewhere awesome.

Panic! At the Discography: Gasp

There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.

Hunter S. Thompson
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1971

Gasp
An Earwig's Guide to Traveling: Collected Vinyl and Unreleased Tracks 1996-1999
Avant Garde Farm
2005
Gasp were fuckin' weird. That's the first thing you need to know. Like Melvins-level weird. They had an album called Drome Triler of Puzzle Zoo People and stage names like Professor Cantaloupe, ferfuckssake. You try to tell me what that's even supposed to mean. But their very weirdness was this SoCal "psychedelic power violence" band's greatest asset: an outre attitude that set them far (FAR!) outside the musical boxes erected by their mid-90s contemporaries (bassist Cynthia got more conventional when she went on to Despise You). Unlike the lightspeed hardcore of the day, Gasp brought a more brooding brand of sludgy noise to the power violence plate and they took their goddamned time about getting there. They mixed up Man is the Bastards bass bludgeoning with weird burbling noises, random jazz freakouts, manipulated tape insanity and other oddities. If Swans had been a power violence band then Soundtracks for the Blind probably would have sounded something like this retrospective. The most beautiful part of An Earwig's Guide to Traveling is that it doesn't feel like a discography record. There's a seamlessness and an intention to Gasp's oddity that stitches together all 65 minutes into a single psychedelic trip, making it the rare discography that feels like a unified album experience. Where Man is the Bastard tried to reconcile man and nature through low slung bass and screeching effects, Gasp were on a trip straight to your pineal gland and if their weird samples and soothing tape loops couldn't lull you into a trance, they would break on through to the other side using brute force. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to hear that The Endless Blockade have Gasp records stashed in their collection because the Canadian power violence revivalists see to be operating on the same cosmic wavelength. While An Earwig's Guide to Traveling is a slow starter, those with the patience to synch to its vibe will find themselves transported, as though all of the songs were written and recorded of a piece rather than trickled out as splits and 7-inches over the course of half a decade. Too weird to live at the time, Gasp's power violence excursions have survived the band's death as new generation's connoisseurs turn on, tune in and freak out.

Edmonton Rock City: Detroit Have a History of (Power) Violence

Sam, we hardly knew ye

Singers in Detroit seem to have a lifespan rivaling Spinal Tap drummers. We've yet to bid farewell to 2012 and the prolific Edmonton power violence band has gone through a hat trick of mic-men. Exeunt Rhys and Sam; enter Cory stage right. Though they have two more months to make it a four pack on the year, band mainstays Isaac (drums) and Emmett (guitar) seem to think that noob Cory just might have some staying power.
"Singers are pretty much like bass players, you don't reeeaaally need them," Emmett hedged. "Fortunately, now we have someone who can do both! But Sam, of course, will be dearly missed, and I'm super stoked to be playing with Cory. He's got super awesome Infest-esque vocals that land perfectly in the middle between Rhys and Sam, and as for stability, this will have to be the most stable we've ever been as far as singers go."
Cory takes over for Sam, who brought the beast on Detroit's self-titled hit and run from just a few months ago. The band knew from the beginning that Sam would be a stopgap after the band lost first vocalist Rhys, and the new guy was careful to pay tribute to his immediate predecessor.
"Sam is an amazing vocalist with some crazy range. I definitely don't have that range of super intense growls and crazy high screams," Cory said. "The best I can describe it is that this is probably the angriest Detroit has ever sounded. As far as stability goes, I like to think my run with Detroit is going to outlast Sam's. Everyone knew he was moving from Day 1, and that he would only be in the band till they found a more permanent vocalist. So far it seems everyone is reacting positively to what I bring to Detroit."
Cory finds the band coming off a musical high. They've put out two solo efforts, a split with Robocop, and a spot on the Monomaniac compilation in 2012 and have an upcoming split with Dysplasia (Cory's prior band where he logged bass duty), a split tape with Shooting Spree and Prison Violence as well as an upcoming full length record. While the Dysplasia split will be the final release to feature Sam, Cory will set vocals to tape (or bytes) from there.
Their recent self-titled record found Detroit at their most ferocious and violent, not so much straddling as bludgeoning the line between grindcore and modern power violence. Isaac said playing shows with Shooting Spree, sixbrewbantha and Cooked and Eaten pushed Detroit into faster, more ambitious territory. It's something the drummer plans to carry over to the band's first full length.
"I wanted to write more grindcore-influenced blasting noise," Isaac said. "My vision for the LP is mostly that same kind of ‘grindviolence’ while still retaining some of the more experimental elements, but we're only half done writing it, so it could still go in a number of directions. Plus Sam grinded way harder then Rhys did, so going that direction felt pretty natural."
Detroit describe the new songs as a blend of their recent grinding violence lashings, maybe with a tad of experimenting for kicks and assorted impromptu madness.
"We have about half of it recorded already so I think when we overcome our laziness we'll throw a couple of songs on the internet, but who knows how long it will take us to write/record the last half," Emmett said. "I can't say I want to stray too far from the sound we have going on right now in regards to experimentation. However, a lot of our newer songs were written on the spot, so who knows what will happen. Essentially I'm just having way too much fun ripping off my favourite bands."
"The Robocop split was recorded about a year and a half ago now, and on there we were all like 'no distortion for like 30 seconds!,' or 'clean singing!,' but since then we’ve grown a ton as a band and we can do way better now," Isaac added. "I’ve also got way better at drums even since the self-titled EP, so the tempos have picked up a bit more and there’s more weird, tech shit going on. It’ll probably end up on [Grindcore Karaoke] but IF ANY LABELS WANNA PUT IT OUT ON VINYL HIT UP isaachorne2@gmail.com. WE REALLY WANNA HAVE IT ON A 12-inch."
[Ya think dude really wants to see it come out as a physical record, eh? But if you've seen the gorgeous job Give Praise did on the Detroit/Robocop split you can maybe understand his enthusiasm.]
For Cory's part, he said he's waiting for his crack at the studio (aka the basement) to start layering on his vocals.
"It's always awesome to show up at jam and find out these guys have written even more songs. It really keeps thing refreshing knowing that aside for one or two staples, our set list is going to be different every show," he said. "I'm extremely excited for the full-length, and would love to keep grinding out more splits if people want to do them with us. I've been in a band for two years that has yet to really release anything (The upcoming split with Detroit being the first), so the idea of being in a band that already has even more lined up gets me extremely stoked."
What also stokes Cory's furnace is the cyclical resurgence of the power violence sound, rediscovered, reincarnated and reinvigorated for a new century of pissed off teens desperate to push punk to its physical and emotional borders. Unlike Nietzsche's horror in the face of the eternal recurrence, Detroit embrace the latest wave of abbreviated, blasting hardcore and the fellow travelers who brought the sound back.
"The resurgence PV 'scene,' if you will, seems populated by a lot of teens and young adults like ourselves who never got to be a part of that original '90s power violence era," Cory said. "We never got a chance to see our favorite bands live. We never got to walk down the street in a Crossed Out shirt that we got at the show a few days before. We're the same pissed off kids just 20 years late to the game. We want to fill that void that seems to exist in our lives and follow in the footsteps of what our grinding forefathers did before us. That said, like the guys put it, we don't want to worship the same bands or rip them off; we just want to play music as loud and fast as we want and get stoked on it."

G&P Review: Detroit

Detroit
Detroit
Grindcore Karaoke
As if one top 10-worthy album this year in Pusher and a kick ass split with Robocop  weren't enough to crown 2012 already, Canadian power violence overachievers Detroit are rocking your earholes yet again with a tidy self-titled record that may just be their best one yet. Through some power of musical osmosis, Detroit seem to have absorbed the musical violence splitmates Robocop shed on Dead Language, Foreign Bodies, turning in their tightest, most abrasive performance yet.
Their self-titled album, with a new singer in tow, is not a huge departure for the Canadian neo-violence collective. Rather it ups the ante on everything they’ve done before, ruthlessly churning through six new originals and an Infest cover in less than four minutes.
Everything about this effort is raw and burly and noisy and perfectly violent. The new singer is not much of a change, but he brings a tad more muscular delivery to the mic that nicely dovetails the band's more aggressive stance. Album centerpiece "Without" is one of those slow build bits of pyrotechnic brilliance that radiates out in chest-crushing shockwaves. "The Only Itch That Never Needs Scratching" rodeos the kind of slab-sided pounding you expect from Iron Lung in a concise 25 seconds. Waving goodbye with a rousing rip through Infest's "Feeling Mean" just punctuates the tone Detroit set from the album's first note.
Way back at their earliest demo I (half jokingly) dubbed the Detroit guys Robocop Jr. Since then they’ve shared wax with that band and now they’re moving into the same spiky sonic territory as the (now bicoastal) Maine bastards.

G&P Review: Robocop/Detroit

They swept her on into the ballroom, where she was seized about the waist by a handsome young man in a Harris tweed coat and waltzed round and round, through the rustling, shuffling hush, under a great unlit chandelier. Each couple on the floor danced whatever was in the fellow's head: tango, two-step, bossa nova, slop. But how long, Oedpida thought, could it go on before collisions became a serious hindrance? There would have to be collisions. The only alternative was some unthinkable order of music, many rhythms, all keys at once, a choreography in which each couple meshed easy, predestined. Something they all heard with an extra sense atrophied in herself. She followed her partner's lead, limp in the young mute's clasp, waiting for the collisions to begin. But none came. She was danced for half an hour before, by mysterious consensus , everybody took a break, without having felt any touch but the touch of her partner. Jesus Arrabal would have called it an anarchist miracle. Oedipa, with no name for it, was only demoralized. She curtsied and fled.

Thomas Pynchon
The Crying of Lot 49
1966

Robocop/Detroit
Dead Language, Foreign Bodies
Grindcore Karaoke
A great split requires a synthesis of disparate musical visions, an unspoken simpatico that's difficult enough to achieve within the competing personalities of a single band, let alone multiple. But 2012 has proven to be a banner year for synergistic tag teams. Dephosphorus and Wake have already made productive musical congress and Priapus stepped out with Old Painless. Now Robocop and Detroit up the bar with one of the most balanced faceoffs you'll hear. This long awaited split finds both bands moving toward a common center. Robocop has cleaned up their sound while Detroit follow up Pusher with another handful of more impassioned songs.
The most intriguing transformation is Robocop, who have never sounded this clean and crystalline. It adds new shadings to a signature song like "Feminism Uber Alles," which gets reinterpreted as a largely instrumental tune with John Zorn-style sax wailing standing in for vocals. I think I miss the loud, violent sound of their past efforts where it sounded like the songs only held together by dint of an anarchist miracle, but nonetheless it's absolutely fascinating to hear the band through new ears. The cleaner production gives more prominence to all the subtleties at play, like the constant background hum that unsettles "Psychic Transferal." Otherwise, Robocop once again indulge in their wonted obsession with how the frighteningly permeable meat we call our bodies interface with the 21st Century.
Detroit's half meshes perfectly with their Pusher material (the song "Pusher" closes out their selections, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear these songs come from that same recording session). The guitars are reedy and needling, insistent and uncomfortable. It provides the perfect platform for the all in conviction of songs like "Day After Day," which captures and embodies the relentless march of time that must drag at and wear down the genuinely depressed. Elsewhere, the mournful, clean-toned dirge of the primarily instrumental "Into You" shows real maturity as it slides into a brief spat of distorted rage and ranting defiance.
Detroit and Robocop are not just two bands thrown together for the sake of mutual promotion. Rather, this is a great pairing of two modern power violence bands take similar routes to entirely different, but still complementary, destinations. This one is a must hear.

The Namesake Series: "Mothra"

While publicly proclaiming my love of kaiju metal a few months ago, I did severe damage to my credibility by forgetting that Justin Broadrick is not the only one who has fallen under the sway of Godzilla's benevolent lepidotera companion. Canadian power violencers The Endless Blockade have also sung the praises of the peaceful spirit of the Earth. While I prefer Battra, the spirit of the Earth's rage, I've got to admit these are a pair of pretty sweet songs.

The Namesake Series: "Iron Lung"

The negative pressure ventilator, aka the iron lung, was a technological marvel that kept thousands of polio patients alive during the 1930s and '40s. The technology has been superseded and the gadget is little more than a historic curiosity since vaccines have essentially eliminated polio. However, the image of the iron lung still has enough resonance to inspire a trifecta of excellent noise.



First up is Brutal Truth whose anomalously conjoined "Ironlung" was a mid-album noise pastiche to break up all the grinding on breakout album Need to Control.




The breathing apparatus also inspired British psycho punks Rudimentary Peni to get all noise collagey, closing out the (allegedly) semi-autobiographical freakazoid album Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatic. Turn on, tune in, freak the fuck out.





Obviously the band Iron Lung took their name from the, duh, iron lung, but it also inspired their song "Iron Lung," another power violent tiptoe through the band's back catalog.

A Wake to a Life of Misery: Canadian Grinders are Surrounded by Human Filth

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring," astronomer and all around science evangelizer Carl Sagan famously said.
That could just as easily double as the mission statement for Wake's brand of grindcore/power violence Calgary stampede. Sagan's penetrating quest for truth above all, and his willingness to pursue it even when it conflicted with popular religious beliefs, formed the basis guitarist Rob Strawberry's atheistic outlook and snarling grindcore bite.
"Sagan was a brilliant scientist, free thinker, a man that questioned the existence of god at times when it was unpopular to do so, and a man that passed too early," Strawberry said. "Reading his books/studying him as a teen lead me to paths of atheism, secular humanism, and the overall platform of science, logic and reason. We wouldn't say he is an influence directly to our lyrics or music but more indirectly, on an individual basis, at least for me, personally."
Wake have proclaimed their penetrating philosophy of uncompromising angst over a killer EP and full length to date, cementing themselves at the vanguard of the next generation of punk-minded bruisers. While Sagan's sense of wonder at the mysteries of the universe may have been a source of inspiration, Strawberry and fellow guitarist Sergey Jmourovski don't share his sunny optimism. In fact, Wake (rounded out by drummer Ryan Kennedy, bassist Jacob Ryan and vocalist Kyle Ball) admit the band isn't "doing anything groundbreaking lyrically." They're content to give vent to their personal frustrations against the backdrop of a steel-toed musical stomping.
"We've set out to make an album that best depicts our discontent with the issues at hand, and we did just that," Strawberry and Jmourovski said. "With the new record, we will be changing our approach and digging deeper than simply stating what we hate. We have to change our way of thinking and living if we are to survive as a species (but why?)."
About that new record? Are you sitting down? Good. The good people at 7 Degrees, who pressed Leeches, have hooked Wake up with fellow blog darlings Dephosphorus for a split 7-inch of three new songs apiece due out in April.

My God. It's full of stars.

I'm going to go ahead and call this the best tag-team of 2012 without having heard a single note.
"We recorded some songs with Colin Marston in New York while we were on tour last year. Once we got home we decided that we wanted to do a split with an international band," Wake said. "We talked it over with Simon (7 Degrees Records) and he recommended us doing the split with Dephosphorus. We had a listen to the tracks Dephosphorus had recorded for the project and we were floored. Simply a band that is innovating, not imitating."
The admiration is mutual, Dephosphorus vocalist Panos Agoros said. Wake is "a group of persons in the right spirit, with healthy worldviews and a genuine passion for underground music," he said.
"They write and execute devastating tunes, [that] also happen to be catchy and monumental like 'Cult Of War,' 'The Means To The End,' or 'Leeches.,'" Agoros said. "As a personal plus, the intensity and heaviness of their music reminded me quite a lot of two sadly defunct (last time I checked, at least) favorite U.S. bands of mine: Kalibas and Rune."
Wake plan to roadtest the new material throughout the United States and Canada this summer before diving right back in to the studio this fall to record to follow up to Leeches.
"We've been writing hard, and are very happy with the new songs," Strawberry and Jmourovski said. "Faster/darker/noisier yet retaining melody, a logical progression for ourselves. Did I mention they're faster? We'll be heading out on a US/Canada tour in July and are hoping to record again in the fall, grinding harder than ever. Look out for the split with Dephosphorus to be out in April, and we can't wait to rip on the east coast/mid-west in the summer."
The busy schedule is all part of the revolution through evolution that Wake demand from themselves. Not content to rework territory they've already covered, Strawberry and Jmourovski said Wake continually push themselves out of their comfort zone.
"There is no progress without conflict, well being leads to stagnation, and we will never evolve without questioning our own existence," they said. "Such an attitude will never come from being content, and we do our best to never be comfortable in our own skin."
Carl Sagan couldn't have said it any better.

You Grind…But Why?: Carlos Ramirez

Right next door to grindcore lives its unemployed, dreadlocked, power violence. Carlos Ramirez has hopped the fence to crash on both of their couches repeatedly during his tenure with East Coast violence squad Black Army Jacket and the brutally underrated grind collective Hope Collapse. Turns out he may not have noticed much of a difference between them.

“I came into the powerviolence thing through death metal and grindcore,” he said. “I didn't know about bands like No Comment and Capitalist Casualties till after Black Army Jacket started. Andrew from BAJ turned me onto a lot of that stuff and in turn I got him into a lot of death metal bands.”