Compiling Autumn Part 7: The Third Children

Touch me oh please I want to know that it's real
And if it's not it's better just to pretend
“The Necropolitan”

Mind Seduction Aftermath

Discordance Axis’ members may rank The Inalienable Dreamless as a personal milestone in their various musical careers, but that is not what made that record a transformative grindcore landmark. In the decade since its release The Inalienable Dreamless has become a life-changing touchstone for a new wave of musicians who have internalized that album’s influence as they craft their own art. A misunderstood anomaly in their day, Discordance Axis are now considered grindcore pioneers who opened the doors to new modes of expression.
“More and more people talk about it as the years go by,” drummer Dave Witte said. “I think it really appeals to the musicians as well.”
Noisear guitarist Dorian Rainwater said The Inalienable Dreamless represented “pure adrenalized, unadulterated grind,” influencing his own band’s development.
“The Inalienable Dreamless is a landmark release and the pinnacle of their career,” he said. “It was at the height of their existence and a beautiful display of artistic audio violence.”
Noisear was one of the first American bands to overtly draw inspiration from Discordance Axis’ sleek, technical grindcore, as well as lifting influences from Witte’s former outfit Human Remains. In addition to contributing a cover of “Mimetic” to Discordance Axis' farewell collection Our Last Day, Noisear would also include six Discordance Axis covers on 2007 album Pyroclastic Annhiallation.
That appreciation flows both ways because vocalist Jon Chang would later poach Noisear drummer Bryan Fajardo for his post-Discordance Axis band GridLink.
“Bryan’s emphasis on single pedal blast beats and Dave Witte’s style has been a huge influence on his growth a drummer throughout the years,” Rainwater said. “He, Thomas [Romero, Noisear guitarist] and Angelo [Perea, ex-guitarist] were constantly learning a variety of DA songs and eventually the dissonant chord voicings, hyper blasting, unorthodox patterns bled into our music. For me, personally, DA has always been an influence as well. Chang’s high pitched screaming vocals, raging guttural violence and Rob Marton’s unique guitar playing has an effect on grind unlike many others in the genre who struggle to get this effect with little to no progress.”
Body Hammer's Ryan Page only sought out The Inalienable Dreamless after his 2009 album, Jigoku, was repeatedly compared to Discordance Axis for its fixation on Japanese horror films and its DVD packaging. While the similarities were coincidental, Page said he discovered The Inalienable Dreamless as a result.
"I was extremely impressed with the album, especially the purity of it," Page said. "I enjoyed that the music was all timbrally very similar, and yet carried very distinct songs. That's a something quite difficult to navigate, and even bands I really enjoy like Insect Warfare start to sound samey at album length. Jon Chang's lyrics have always impressed me. It's not particularly common in grindcore or in any other sort of music for abstract, personal lyrics to communicate with the clarity and emotional impact of his writing. Oftentimes lyrics are either solipsistic or they're these cliches that isn't really representative of anything."

Tokyo

Throughout Discordance Axis’s career Chang drew much of lyrical inspiration from Japanese entertainment and pop culture and the band always seemed to resonate there more than it did in the United States.
“Even if you count the Steve Procopio shows, we played more shows in Japan than we did in the U.S. in the history of the band,” Chang said. “We didn’t play a lot of shows in the U.S. at all because nobody would come. There were shows where literally two people were there. Nobody showed up.”
Chang’s interest in Japan was reciprocated by boisterous music fans who were the first to glom on to Discordance Axis’ unique musical and lyrical style. Japanese grinders were among the first to recognize and incorporate Discordance Axis influences into their own music as well.
“Discordance Axis had already been famous in Japan when I [found] their music,” Mortalized guitarist Takafumi Matsurbara said.
Though Mortalized’s technical, relentless sound was not directly influenced by Discordance Axis, Matsubara said he was naturally drawn to another band that was blasting and lacked a bass player.
“We have no bassist in our band, so I was interested in them,” he said. “And Dave is a one foot blast drummer, Rob likes Voivod, those are similar to us. Those are the reasons why I was interested in them.”
Matsubara, who would later join Chang in Hayaino Daisuki and GridLink, called Discordance Axis “one of the greatest bands.”
“I will love DxAx forever,” he said.
Gate guitarist and vocalist Toshinori Otake called The Inalienable Dreamless “the most favorite of my favorites.” The Japanese grindcore duo have covered Discordance Axis extensively, including contributing covers of “The Inalienable Dreamless” and “Radiant Arkham” to Our Last Day. As a band, Otake said Gate was immediately influenced by Discordance Axis. He felt pushed to write faster and more complex music after discovering Jouhou.
“Jouhou, this is the first one I listened to,” he said. “It was in 1999 or 2000, Gate was just formed. My first impression was like, ‘What the fuck!’ I'd never listened to this kind of grindcore music. I had started writing some songs for Gate, like our first demo and Soon to be Sodomized 7-inch, just after listening to Discordance Axis. I wanted to play [in a] faster and [more] complex way.”

Killing Yield

Many grind bands cite Discordance Axis – particularly Marton’s guitar performance – as an important influence, but Marton said he’s reluctant to take any credit for inspiring other musicians.
“I do hear stuff that I think, ‘Oh yeah that could totally be an influence.’ Maybe it could be, maybe not,” Marton said. “I never want to think it was our influence. Maybe. Maybe somebody did. I don’t have the feeling we were that influential. Maybe we were.”
Though Discordance Axis never meshed with the grindcore and metal scene during their life, posthumously the band has found champions among cultural tastemakers who tout The Inalienable Dreamless as an important musical milestone. In March 2009 Decibel selected The Inalienable Dreamless for its Hall of Fame as part of its all-grindcore special issue, further cementing the album’s legendary status.
“To that point we had done a lot of the no brainers, Repulsion Horrified, Napalm Death Scum,” Decibel Editor in Chief Albert Mudrian, author of Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore, said. “We were doing a special grindcore issue at the time, and I was thinking of what great grindcore records hadn’t we included to that point.”
Inducting The Inalienable Dreamless into the Hall of Fame was “a logical next step for us,” representing the second wave of important grindcore bands that included Nasum and Pig Destroyer, Mudrian said.
“If anything at all, it’s still horribly unappreciated,” Mudrian said. “When people roll out the Mount Rushmore of grindcore, I don’t think for the most part they include that record. They’re picking one of the early Napalm Death records, they’re picking Horrified, they’re picking Symphonies of Sickness. Maybe they’re throwing in Brutal Truth. If they’re searching for credibility, maybe they’ll throw some S.O.B. in there. I think there’s some romanticism of the '90s and late '80s. … It’s going to change. It’s going to take time for that stuff to be fully accepted and appreciated. I’ve got friends who are my age who still love extreme metal and classic records and I feed them stuff to check out. I guarantee the majority of them haven’t heard that record.”
Hydra Head co-owner Aaron Turner said there’s an authenticity to The Inalienable Dreamless. Discordance Axis was unwilling to bend artistically to accommodate what was accepted and conventional at the time. The honesty and emotional integrity are what elevate The Inalienable Dreamless from the grindcore masses, attracting a new wave of fans and admirers a decade after the band’s demise.
“One of the things that made them able to do what they were doing with a single-minded approach is they didn’t care what scene they were a part of. They weren’t trying to keep up with their peers,” Turner said. “[Chang] is very determined to get things done the right way. I totally respect that work ethic and that creative focus. It wouldn’t seem that unusual for that kind of thing to exist if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of people seem content to do things to the point they’re good enough.”
For Discordance Axis “good enough” was never good enough.
“With The Inalienable Dreamless we had a common vision, a common goal,” Chang said. “It was three people bringing their A Game to the plate. At that point we had an A Game because we’d been doing it for 10 years. We never took a step back. We never made a Harmony Corruption or ‘Greed Killing.’ ”

G&P Review: Mutant Supremacy

Mutant Supremacy
Rotting Season
Blastbeat Mailmurder
Death Metal grave robbers Mutant Supremacy have looted a whole cemetery stocked with festering corpses named Bolt Thrower, Entombed and Cannibal Corpse. They're redolent of their obvious influences' stench just in case you couldn't seem them printed on their longsleeves. Mutant Supremacy's morbid tales and everflowing streams of aggression are not going to blow away anybody who's been paying attention to death metal at any point in the last two decades, but the performances are spot on and Rotting Season nails the scrappy, maggoty ambiance of a bygone era.
The four song EP, which was actually recorded back in 2010, states its intention off the bat with "Kill Without Question." The song divebombs onto the scene with full whammy bar abuse before chugging along in familiar Entombed mode. Mutant Supremacy ride that wave of retro classic death that puts more emphasis on hook and sepulchral atmosphere than the ability to play a gazillion notes a minute. "Memento Mori," which, naturally, closes out the proceedings, pulls that morbid creepy crawly opening before blasting up the remainders of the song. You can tell the tempo shift is coming, but it's still a fun moment when it happens.
While (judging solely by their promo photos) most of Mutant Supremacy where probably pooping their Pampers back when Death, Morbid Angel and Dismember were pooping out classic records, the quartet innately understood what made that era of metal special and do their best to recapture that vibe. While your nostalgia could probably be more adequately addressed by playing those classic records, Rotting Season is an adequate stopgap in a pinch.

[Full disclosure: Blastbeat Mailmurder sent me a review copy.]

G&P Review: Teething

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11

Teething
Teething
Bandcamp
High school fucking sucked. We can all agree about that, right? Being surrounded by hordes of the hormonally unbalanced, the insipid jock-o-rama culture and good teachers forced to dumb down their classes to accommodate the stupidest of students was pretty much my very definition of hell. There was not a single redeeming thing to be said of the entire miserable four year experience. So it was a bit disconcerting to hear Teething wax nostalgic about high school on the song “1996,” which has got to be the least punk thing a punk band could do. Sure they say it sucked, but the song also romanticizes things like smoking in school bathrooms and getting good and underaged wasted. I remember 1996; I was in high school in 1996; 1996 can kiss my ass.
Not to pick on that one ill-conceived song, but I think “1996” underscores the broader problem I had with the Spanish punks’ rough-throated hardcore. For all the spit and pissing, I just don’t get the feeling Teething really mean any of their generic punk sloganeering. Some of the songs sound almost like a middle aged scriptwriter’s fantasy of what teen punk rebellion feels like for some lame-ass weepy teen flick. Case in point, sour-note starting point “Hell Song” is all “I’m a worthless piece of shit” and chants of “666,” which to Teething’s ears are probably meant to sound bad ass. I just don’t get the feeling they really mean any of it. It’s more punk pose than something heartfelt. It borders on parody. Teen self-loathing is certainly a punk-worthy topic that would be instantly relatable, but “Fuck This Face,” which leaps out with blastbeats and then fizzles to mediocrity, doesn’t convey any real human connection as the singer talks about how much he hates his features and his parents.
My problem is Teething seem to be mouthing the words without delivering the emotional substance. They very well could be deadly serious about this stuff, but their approach just doesn’t convey sincerity. I get the feeling Teething very much want to their songs to be meaningful, but that’s the area where their music needs the most work.

[Full disclosure: Teething sent me a download.]

Compiling Autumn Part 6: I Will Live Forever. Alone.

There is death in everything
We are connected without reason at all
You have your way with me like a lover
But I spite you because I just want the end of the world
“Oratorio in Gray”

Inalienable Rights

The posthumous popularity of Discordance Axis, particularly The Inalienable Dreamless, came as a bit of a surprise to the band. Though their third album garnered much better reviews than either Ulterior or Jouhou, which were dismissed as pretentious at the time, Discordance Axis’ existence was plagued by only moderate success and often empty halls during their infrequent live performances.
“The record was a really mixed reception,” vocalist Jon Chang said. “Maximum Rock N Roll really shit on it. I remember reading some other reviews. We got some very positive response, Terrorizer magazine, specifically. I think it was the best-selling Discordance Axis record, the best received Discordance Axis record.”
Coming with Hydra Head’s imprimatur may have also given The Inalienable Dreamless more legitimacy than Discordance Axis’ past albums, drummer Dave Witte said. The label had already established a reputation for fostering musicians willing to sidestep metal and hardcore’s artistic limitations.
“A lot of people actually liked this. It was kind weird,” Witte said. “Everything with that band, it was late for people to catch on. People got it later. People are dying for us to play a show these days. I don’t think it will happen. When it came out, it was kind of shocking. ... It was definitely different because it was Hydra Head, and it reached way more people than the others did. The reaction was immediately different. It took people a little while to catch on, I think.”
Though Discordance Axis have often been dismissed as pretentious for the eschewing the accepted grindcore formula, Decibel Editor-in-Chief Albert Mudrian, author of Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore, said the band’s artistry was focused and deliberate rather than intellectual affectation.
“I don’t see pretense,” he said. “I do see a willful artfulness about what they were doing. They weren’t trying to be willfully exclusive for people. They didn’t want to say, ‘You don’t get this.’ It was, ‘This is what we’re doing and if you get it, cool.’”
Hydra Head co-owner Aaron Turner said The Inalienable Dreamless has had a significant impact on the musical landscape. It was the right record to harness a brewing change in musical and artistic tastes, he said.
“The presentation and the album itself had a really big impact,” Turner said. “It was an undeniable record. … Maybe by the time Inalienable came out people were ready for that. It seemed like one of those records that clicked.”

Human Collateral

The Inalienable Dreamless’ enduring popularity largely mystifies Discordance Axis, who never reaped the benefits of that recognition during their time together. It was only in the last four years when Chang found a MySpace page for Discordance Axis (masquerading as an official site that has since been taken over by the band) that he began to understand the band’s influence and legacy.
“I was really shocked that not only anybody remembered the record, but liked it and knew about it,” Chang said. “Maybe because the reception at the time was ‘Assück was cool; Discordance Axis were not.’ We were not what people wanted to hear. We never were in the States.”
Though The Inalienable Dreamless is now regarded as a grindcore classic, guitarist Rob Marton still can’t help feeling some disappointment with how the record sounds and how he played some of the songs. Though his performance is one of the most praised aspects of the album, the guitarist is critical of his playing.
“It was really difficult to play some of these songs. I muddled through some of it. We couldn’t go back and redo that. There were some subtle things that drive me absolutely bananas when I hear it that nobody would really hear,” Marton said. “There were some songs I had to fast forward through; I couldn’t even hear it. We had an experience playing those songs. There was time when we were so on and we couldn’t wait to record that and that’s not what we recorded. We had to take what we had.”
For all of his concerns, Marton has since made his peace with what The Inalienable Dreamless is and how it’s since been received by a new generation of grindcore fans, even if he remains mystified by the response.
“I listen to it now and I enjoy and I do like it,” Marton said. “I still hear what I heard. I understand now why I felt like I did. I’m surprised by the legacy. I thought it would be a flash in the pan. It’s been how many years now? I’m still talking about this album. I didn’t think I’d be interviewed about it 11 years later.”
Witte, who has since anchored dozens of cutting-edge hardcore and metal bands, ranks The Inalienable Dreamless as his favorite record in his extensive catalog of work.
“I’m really proud of that record. It had a lot of passion and a lot of energy and lot of dynamics,” Witte said. “A lot of people would give us shit and say we’re pretentious at the time. We didn’t give a shit. We were just writing what we liked. Our influences were what we liked.”
For his part, Chang is still unsure what it was about The Inalienable Dreamless that provoked such a reaction from fans because his current band, GridLink, is also no stranger to playing mostly empty halls, despite being critical darlings.
“I’ve never really talked to anybody about why they like the record other than people in interviews asking me questions about it,” Chang said. “I’ve never really thought about it that much, I guess. I don’t know what people attach themselves to. … There isn’t this big want or need for this kind of music. That’s my feeling at least in my neck of the woods.”
Unlike the band, Hydra Head immediately recognized Discordance Axis had created something unique and enduring.
“I felt like it was a really special record right from the get-go,” Turner said. “It had a unique air about it. It did feel like one of those landmark records. I feel like there is a lot of homogeny in grindcore where people are trying to adhere very closely to a set of requisite ideas and parameters in which you can operate and still be grind. One of the things about Discordance Axis was they completely defied that at the time. That’s the definition of a trendsetter.”

G&P Review: Cellgraft

Cellgraft
Cellgraft
Bandcamp
Cellgraft put paid to their all too brief career, amusingly, with the song "Genesis," rasping the band to a close with a pretty awesome scream. There's probably some profound philosophical notion to be extracted from that metaphysical tangle somehow, but right now I'm too bummed that Florida's finest band have flamed out already.
For such a short run, the trio leaves behind a pretty impressive catalogue of material and their eponymous final album does the band proud, seamlessly building off of the awesome Deception Schematic. Cellgraft doesn't deviate far from the band's accustomed influences from Discordance Axis, Assuck and maybe a splash of Insect Warfare. The only real, and surprisingly welcome, difference this outing is the most robust bottom end we've ever heard from them. It adds an incredible new dimension to their twitchy grind. Otherwise, Cellgraft do not jumble a winning formula on this record, playing again to their strengths.
There wasn't any grand artistic growth with Cellgraft. They burst on us seemingly fully formed. Their debts to Discordance Axis and Assuck were obvious but without resorting to outright cloning or riff appropriation. However, their influences do burble up, like the vocal patterns to "Amelioration Lapse," which are cribbed straight from the Jon Chang playbook. That title even has more than a whiff of Discordance Axis about it. That said, Cellgraft's biological, metaphysical and philosophical musings attacked the human condition from angles previously denied to grindcore.
Cellgraft blossomed for too brief a season, but they've left an indelible mark. Hopefully their influence will slowly transform grindcore convention the way their idols did before them as the musical cognoscenti absorb their unique perspective. I had barely processed my grief at Cellgraft's untimely demise when the good people at No Reprieve records informed me that two-thirds of Cellgraft have already moved on to Faith Addiction and have record a new EP's worth of material. All is right with the world again.

G&P Review: Blighted

Blighted
Deliberate
Bandcamp
Blighted spare you the annoyance of having neighbors blast late night music through your bedroom wall by offering a seven song album that sounds like it was recorded in a neighboring apartment. Once you accept and get over the fact that the performances can be a bit muffled at times, you realize your annoying neighbor actually has some pretty decent taste in music.
Musically, Blighted blend the tactical nuclear strikes of Backslider with the lightning flash melodicism of Wake into a compact batch of rough and ready grindy hardcore songs that are to the point and don’t give you too much downtime to digest. Deliberate’s songs are uniformly bluff, blocky and not shy about pushing around your eardrums. However, Blighted does whip out one musical surprise in the shape of “Cycle,” which throws down slow motion heaviness glazed with an almost chiming guitar just to show they have more artistic chops even if they don’t choose to flaunt them.
So the only real knock on Deliberate is that the production forces all of the instruments and the vocals onto a single musical plane. So the album is missing some depth and interplay between its constituent parts, but that also gives Deliberate a mallet-like quality about it. Put Blighted in a decent studio with a modestly more generous recording budget and they just might surprise some people.

[Full disclosure: Blighted sent me a download.]

Compiling Autumn Part 5: Typeface

Cloud swabs white on grey overcast skirt the deck at a steady gait
“Compiling Autumn”

Pattern Blue

The Inalienable Dreamless not only revolutionized how grindcore would sound and what subjects were acceptable lyrical fodder, it also radically altered the visual lexicon of album packaging. It challenged audience expectations of what the genre could do artistically. From the art to the fonts to the packaging, The Inalienable Dreamless is the story of every element of an album contributing to a total listener experience that is idiosyncratic and unique.
More than being a gimmick, the DVD packaging was a crucial element in vocalist Jon Chang’s effort to present the album as an intensely personal experience. Building on the cathartic lyrics, the packaging was meant to mimic the experience of reading someone’s diary, getting a furtive peek into another person’s interior life.
“A lot of my writing in general was coming from I didn’t understand people and how to relate to them. The Inalienable Dreamless and having all the dead leaves inside, I wanted it to look like a journal,” Chang said. “I wanted it to look really personal. That’s part of the reason I wanted the DVD format. I just don’t like the aspect ratio of CDs. I just wanted something more evocative, more cinematic if you will.”
The striking seascape artwork and use of unique or hand-lettered fonts was also a deliberate break from prior grindcore albums, including Discordance Axis’ own. For The Inalienable Dreamless, Chang said he was determined to create something that would stand out on a record store shelf. The Inalienable Dreamless’ packaging came devoid of anything – including song titles – that would hint at its contents. There was only the cryptic pronouncement on the back cover, "I will live forever. Alone." The iconic ocean horizon photo – taken outside of the Sea Bright, New Jersey, beach house where drummer Dave Witte was living at the time – defied every punk, metal and grindcore convention. There were no black and white photos of dead bodies, no grisly gore, no repurposed political trappings. The Inalienable Dreamless, visually, immediately jumped out when placed next to contemporary albums. Inside, the hand-lettered lyric sheet and autumnal-themed artwork also contributed to that scrapbook feel.
“Enough of the dark imagery. The music is going to sell that,” Chang said. “On the cover I want to show this horizon. Something that’s open and hopeful, but inside here’s the reality. That’s why the back says ‘I will live forever.’ Then, ‘Alone.’ ”
Photographer Scott Kinkade, whose work has appeared in Decibel magazine and who shot both GridLink album covers, met Chang at a Philadelphia show in 1996. Kinkade said the singer is "deep rooted and methodical" as a visual artist, careful to tie his lyrics to anchor his artwork in his musical metaphors to create a cohesive artistic package. The Inalienable Dreamless is "the 'art' record to me," Kinkade said.
"The artwork is the perfect contrast of visual elements to the music Discordance Axis created," Kinkade said. "The vastness of a never-ending sky, which at one time, the cover image was going to have a human element involved but was nixed. The text 'I will live forever. Alone.' Quite chilling, but a riddle that holds the record all together. I do not think there are many artists/designers thinking like Jon. The Inalienable Dreamless was out of the box different. No one will try to recreate it. The work would get pinned to this record."

Aperture of Pinholes

Though the band’s requests may have put off other labels, Hydra Head was immediately supportive of Discordance Axis’ vision for The Inalienable Dreamless. The art was just as important as the music in creating that unique album experience.
“We’ve always been proponents of our artists doing exactly what they want for what’s right for their record. We were really excited,” label co-owner Aaron Turner said. “Not many people had done CDs in DVD packages. That seemed like a great idea. Chang wasn’t contrary for the sake of being contrary. It suited the record well. We got into Jon’s ideas and that made us even more excited about working with them. … The packaging is anything but dark. It’s this bright blue seascape. There’s no splattery logo. It wasn’t willfully contradictory. All the pieces definitely fit.”
For the other members of the band, as with the lyrics, they trusted Chang’s vision, giving him the autonomy to craft the album’s constituent parts and organize its artwork.
“He totally masterminded that whole thing,” guitarist Rob Marton said. “He told us what we were going to do and we said, ‘Awesome.’ Me and Dave just looked at each and said, ‘Cool,’ and he knocked it out.”
That artistic autonomy was also a key motivator when Discordance Axis agreed to work with Hydra Head.
“That was the thing that really sold Jon,” Witte said. “Jon had this way of doing it and was really strict about it. Hydra Head not only offered us quality music, but they cared and went the extra mile with the packaging. … I knew Aaron from Isis and playing shows and seeing him around and I knew what Hydra Head was about, but it was an alien world for Jon. I think when that happened he was like, ‘Cool.’ It’s really rare to have a huge list of demands like that and the label to go, ‘Sure.’ It’s unheard of.”
Bizarre fonts and exotic packaging were not the only demands Discordance Axis were known to place on labels and distributors. For prior albums, Chang said he had put constraints on Devour, such as not letting their music be shipped through major distribution channels “because we were trying to be punk rock or something stupid.”
Discordance Axis also attempted to make The Inalienable Dreamless slightly more eco-friendly by otherwise minimizing the packaging, a move undone by retailers and distributors.
“The Inalienable Dreamless shipped without shrink wrap because I didn’t want to create all that plastic garbage and record stores would shrink wrap it,” Chang said. “I was fighting a losing battle.”
Turner said he simply accepted the band’s requests. It also didn’t hurt Witte warned the label about Chang’s artistic intentions in advance.
“We were often unorthodox in our approach, and [Witte] thought that might be a good fit given Chang’s demands for how things needed to go from a label,” Turner said. “Witte gave us some forewarning. He said Chang, by some people’s standards, is very hard to work with. He has very specific standards for people he works with. We weren’t put off by that. … Over the years he’s softened up. We like working with bands that do things in unorthodox ways. Whenever possible we try to avoid doing things in a conventional way. In that way Jon has turned out to be a perfect working partner for us.”